BENGALURU: Serial rapist and killer Umesh Reddy was transferred to Bangalore Central Prison from Hindalga Central Prison in Belagavi on June 3, after the Supreme Court in November last year commuted his death sentence to a 30-year sentence. He was lodged in Hindalga since 2011.
The Karnataka High Court had sentenced Reddy to death in 2009, and the sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2011. In 2022, however, the apex court commuted his death sentence on the grounds that he was unlawfully placed in solitary confinement for 10 years, from his arrest in 2006 till the rejection of his mercy petition by the President in 2013. He was further kept in solitary confinement till 2016.
As per sources, there are around 26 death row convicts in Hindalga Central Prison. “Historically, death sentence convicts in Karnataka have been lodged in Hindalga. Reddy has been transferred to Bangalore since he is no more on death row,” said sources.
Reddy, a former police constable, had confessed to raping and killing 18 women and was convicted in nine cases. On October 26, 2006, he was awarded the death sentence by a fast-track court established by the sessions court in Bengaluru, for raping and murdering Jayashree Maradi Subbaiah, a 37-year-old widow from Peenya, on February 28, 1998.
The victim’s seven-year-old son was the sole witness to the crime. Reddy used to target home-alone women after gaining entry into their houses on some pretext, threaten them at knife-point and force them to remove their clothes, tie them up, choke them and rape them.