HYDERABAD: A man sentenced to life imprisonment in a murder case in 1983 walked out of prison on parole, never returned and went on to spend four decades as a free man — including receiving a “Best Teacher” award in 2004, before being arrested in 2024.
The extraordinary case came before the Telangana High Court, which has dismissed a petition seeking parole for Sandula Veeranna, while directing the prison authorities to put in place a system to ensure that prisoners released on parole do not disappear.
Veeranna was sentenced to life imprisonment by an Additional District Judge, Warangal, on June 9, 1983, and lodged in Central Prison, Warangal. He was released on 30-day parole on December 17 that year, later extended until March 17, 1984. He was due to surrender the following day.
He never did.
According to the high court order which was made public on Wednesday, Veeranna was finally apprehended by a Special Task Force on May 16, 2024 — 40 years, one month and 28 days after he was supposed to return to prison.
In the intervening years, he had apparently managed to build an entirely ordinary life. According to his wife’s petition, he remained in Mahbubabad district, secured a government teaching job, received a Best Teacher Award in 2004 and retired in 2013.
The state told the court that it had made efforts to trace him, including correspondence with police authorities between 2012 and 2020, before eventually forming a Special Task Force.
After his arrest, the prison authorities issued a show-cause notice and subsequently forfeited about 27 days of remission earned by him and barred him from parole and furlough for three years.
His wife challenged the order, arguing that authorities had failed to act for four decades and that he required parole on medical grounds.
The judge, however, refused to interfere, observing that Veeranna had deliberately evaded his sentence and had obtained government employment without disclosing his conviction. Since his conviction had neither been set aside nor overturned, he was required to undergo the remaining sentence.
HC orders Telangana to frame guidelines to track parolees
But the court was less forgiving of the system that had allowed a life convict to remain at large for so long.
The court said the failure to track a prisoner for 40 years, during which he obtained a government job and retired, “reflects poorly” on the efforts of the jail authorities.
It directed the state to frame guidelines to track prisoners released on parole and ensure that they return on the expiry of their parole, besides constituting Special Task Forces to maintain vigilance over such prisoners.
A prisoner walked out on parole in 1983. By the time the prison came looking for him, he had become a retired teacher.