BENGALURU : May 28, 1991, Shakereh Namazie - the granddaughter of Dewan of Mysore, Sir Mirza Ismail was buried alive by her husband Shraddhanand alias Murali Manohar Misra in the backyard of her house — 81, Richmond Road, Bengaluru after he laced her morning tea with sedatives. He was for long eyeing her property and committed the crime to usurp it.
An ordinary, short-but-broad-built man Shraddhanand was an errands-running boy with the erstwhile family of Begum of Rampur, UP, who through his gift-of-the-gab and clever maneuverings, had risen to the rank of an accountant of the former royal household. He was handling their tax and property matters.
Shakereh, who was earlier married to her cousin — an IFS officer and diplomat to Iran, Akbar Khaleeli — met Shraddhanand during a family visit to the Begum of Rampur in Delhi in 1982. Shraddhanand, who is said to have a degree in law, by then, had developed some knowledge in property and tax matters of the former royal estates.
Shakereh had inherited a lot of property from her mother Gauhar Namazie and through her marriage, and was on the look-out for someone who could manage it for her. On her invitation, Shradhanand came down to Bengaluru and weaved his way into the heart of Shakereh.
For him, the timing was perfect. Khaleeli was posted to Iran post the Islamic Revolution. Shakereh stayed back in Bengaluru with their four daughters when Shraddhanand came down and started living in a portion of their sprawling mansion on Richmond Road. He soon won her trust, and in no time, began to play upon her alleged desire to have a son.
He reportedly claimed to have possessed occult powers and donned the honorific title of ‘Swami Shraddhanand.’
According to court records, Shradhananda started helping Shakereh resolve property issues, and soon the two got into a relationship.
In 1985, on Khaleeli’s return to India Shakereh divorced him, a husband of of 21 years, and married Shraddhanand on April 17, 1986. In 1987, he managed to get power of attorney over his wife’s property. For him, it was a marriage of convenience. He was eyeing Shakereh’s property and exploited her vulnerability.
What annoyed him was that she continued being close to her daughters and mother. He saw that as a threat to his nefarious plans of taking over his wife’s property worth hundreds of crores.
There were radical differences between the two. Shakereh in every sense was blue-blooded, a beauty and epitome of grace and poise. Shraddhanand had built his legacy on craft and manipulation. Soon, differences cropped up between them. And in 1991, he decided to eliminate her. He got a wooden casket measuring 2x7x2, claiming that he would keep the antiques and ornaments safely in it. He then hired some labourers to dig a ‘tank pit’ in the courtyard, behind their bedroom.
On May 28, 1991, he laced Shakereh’s morning tea with sleeping tablets, and put her in the casket and buried her alive in the backyard of her house. A pathological liar, he lied to Shakereh and Khaleeli’s second daughter Sabah, who filed a missing complaint in June 1992 with the Ashoknagar police station after she was done with Shraddhanand’s lies about her mother’s whereabouts. The murder case was cracked by then constable Veeraiah, who got the first strong leads from two youths, who were working in Shakereh’s house after he befriended them over liquor. They gave the story away.
Shraddhanand was convicted and sentenced to death by the Sessions court in Bengaluru in 2000. The Karnataka High Court in September 2005 upheld his death sentence. In 2008, the larger bench of the SC commuted death sentence to life imprisonment without remission. In 2011, Shraddhanand, who was lodged in in the Central Prison at Parappana Agrahara, Bengaluru, was transferred to Bhopal Central prison in MP — his home state — on his request.
Shraddhanand, now 83, is lodged in Sagar Central Prison, MP. He is said to be medically fit and is doing what he is best at, playing godman. He teaches jail inmates yoga and conducts spiritual classes, said sources. He has reappeared in the spotlight now with his appeal to the SC for release seeking parity with the seven Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts, who were recently released on grounds of “good conduct.”