Mr Sharma has been in jail for 20 years in what came to be known as the tandoor murder case.
Naina Sahni was murdered on July 2, 1995 and her body was chopped into pieces and stuffed into a tandoor or open clay oven at a popular restaurant in the heart of Delhi.
Policemen patrolling the area saw thick smoke from the tandoor and found Naina’s dismembered half-burnt body. Sushil Sharma fled, but surrendered a week later.
A trial court had in 2003, convicted Sharma and sentenced him to death, finding him guilty of shooting Naina in a fit of rage at their home in central Delhi and attempting to dispose of her body in the tandoor at the restaurant, where his friend was a manager.
Sushil Sharma suspected that Naina, a Congress worker, was having an affair with another party worker.
The Delhi high court had upheld the death sentence, but in 2013, the Supreme Court commuted it to a life term, observing that the murder could not be categorised as a “rarest of rare” crime. “It is not a crime against society but a crime committed due to (Sharma’s) strained relationship with his wife,” the court said.
Sharma, who argued in court that his conviction was based entirely on circumstantial evidence, had filed an appeal for remission or a reduction in jail term and premature release. He had earlier been paroled because his mother was ill, and returned to jail on September 7.
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