New Delhi, May 15 -- The Supreme Court on Friday allowed a plea seeking premature release of one of the convicts in the 2003 murder case of 26-year-old poet Madhumita Shukla, while observing that the nature of an offence cannot be the sole ground for denying remission.

A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan noted that convict Rohit Chaturvedi has spent 22 years in jail without remission.

It set aside the order of the Ministry of Home Affairs dated July 9, 2025, which had rejected the Uttarakhand government's recommendation for the premature release of Chaturvedi.

The apex noted that MHA has passed a "non-speaking and cryptic" order, and said that any order affecting the rights of a person and particularly his liberty, must ...