Karnataka Cabinet rejects mercy petitions of Shubha and Arun in Ring Road murder case

The Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday rejected the mercy petitions filed by convict Shubha Shankarnarayan and co-convict Arun Verma, who have been sentenced to life imprisonment in the 2003 Ring Road murder case in Bengaluru. She had been convicted for the murder of her fiancé four days after their engagement, along with other accomplices.

Student of law

Shubha, a law student at the time, had been engaged to 27-year-old software engineer B.V. Girish. She had her accomplices brutally attack him on Ring Road on December 2, 2003, four days after their engagement, using a vehicle shock absorber. Girish succumbed to his injuries at a hospital the next day. The case came to be called the “Ring Road murder case”.

While she had tried to make the episode look like an incident of mugging, investigators found that the engagement was a forced one and that she was in a relationship with Arun Varma, her junior at law college. She had conspired with Arun and two others to murder Girish.

On the night of December 2, 2003, Girish took Shubha out for dinner. At her request, he later drove to a spot near HAL Airport in Bengaluru to watch aircraft take off and land. While he was there, he was attacked.

In July 2010, a trial court convicted all four accused and sentenced them to life imprisonment for murder and criminal conspiracy. The Karnataka High Court upheld their convictions and sentences.

SC upholds sentence

In July 2025, the Supreme Court, while upholding her life sentence, granted her time to file a mercy petition before the Governor. Accordingly, both Shubha and Arun filed mercy petitions before the Governor, who forwarded them to the State Cabinet for a decision. The Cabinet rejected the petitions after verification.