The Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday rejected mercy petitions filed by Shubha Shankaranarayana and D Arun Verma, who are serving life sentences for the December 2003 murder of Shubha’s 27-year-old fiancé, software engineer B V Girish, in Bengaluru.
“The recommendation will now be sent to Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot for a final decision on the petitions. Investigators subsequently arrested Shubha, Verma and two other men, A Venkatesh and Dinesh, also known as Dinakaran. The Supreme Court’s 132-page judgment examined communications between the accused in the days leading up to the murder.
Because shubha did not want to proceed with the marriage, the prosecution alleged that the attack was part of a conspiracy to kill Girish.
Phone records showed frequent exchanges between Shubha and Verma before the killing, including communications on the day of her engagement to Girish. The Home Department had obtained opinions from the police and prison departments before placing the matter before the Cabinet,” home minister Priyank Kharge said after the meeting on Thursday.
The court considered the volume and timing of these communications alongside evidence about the accused persons’ relationships, the recovery of the weapon and their conduct after the attack. It found that the prosecution had established the motive and the conspiracy. The court also examined evidence that messages had been deleted from the accused persons’ phones. The communications, together with the other circumstances proved during the trial, formed part of the chain of evidence on which the convictions rested.
Verma, then 19, was studying in the first semester of the same course.
Shubha was unwilling to marry Girish and wanted to pursue her relationship with Arun Verma, a fellow law student, according to the prosecution case examined by the Supreme Court.
The petitions followed a July 14, 2025, Supreme Court judgment that upheld the life sentences imposed on all four people convicted in the case. Dismissing their appeals, the court gave the convicts eight weeks to approach the governor under Article 161 of the Constitution, which empowers governors to grant pardons, suspend sentences, remit punishments or commute them in cases within the state’s executive jurisdiction. The Cabinet’s rejection does not constitute the governor’s final decision. The constitutional process will conclude when the governor decides the petitions.
