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The Uttarakhand High Court on Monday upheld the life sentence awarded to ex-Samajwadi Party Member of Parliament Amarmani Tripathi in connection with the Madhumita Shukla murder case. The high court also upheld the punishment against all other accused in the case, including Amarmani's wife, Madhumani. Amarmani and his wife were found guilty of murdering the poetess nearly a decade ago. Two other accused in the case, Amarmani's nephew Rohit Chaturvedi and an acquaintance Santosh Roy, were also sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in Dehradun in October 2007. However, Prakash Chandra Pandey, the man accused of having murdered Madhumita, was acquitted on grounds of insufficient evidence. Though the CBI had earlier demanded the death penalty for all of the accused, the high court said the case did not fall in the rarest of the rare category, and felt that the four deserved only life punishment. On May 8, 2003, two assailants shot dead twenty-six-year-old Hindi poetess, Madhumita Shukla at her RiverBank Colony residence in Lucknow . The litigious case assumed political dimensions after Nidhi Shukla, Madhumita's sister, alleged that the poetess was in a relationship with former Uttar Pradesh Minister of State Amarmani Tripathi. On February 8, 2007, the Supreme Court transferred the controversial murder case to Dehradun from Lucknow following defence pleas that Tripathi's supporters were intimidating witnesses.

Madhumita murder case: Life sentence for Amarmani Tripathi upheld