Who killed Shruti Hill?

The Madhya Pradesh High Court recently acquitted a tribal ex-medical student in a murder case after he spent nearly 14 years in jail. However, who killed the woman is still a mystery

- SRAVANI SARKAR

On May 9—4,979 days after he was picked up from room number 61 in the B Block of Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal—Chandresh Marskole, 36, walked out of Bhopal Central Jail with a grocery bag full of personal belongings and some medical books. He was, finally, a free man.

A Gond tribal from Doke village in Waraseoni in Balaghat district, about 480km from Bhopal, Marskole had been in jail for close to 14 years on charges of murdering Shruti Hill, his alleged girlfriend. “He has been a victim of truth being sacrificed at the altar of a motivated and malicious investigation,” said the Madhya Pradesh High Court on May 4. It also directed the state government to pay him ₹42 lakh as compensation within 90 days.

The 78-page order written by judges Atul Sreedharan and Sunita Yadav is a significant documentation of jurisprudence. It has all the makings of a crime thriller novel, given the detailing of the investigative loopholes and legal aspects. But, unlike in a whodunnit, the real murderer is still unknown.

“From the material on record, we find the conduct of the police is malicious and the investigation has been done with the intention of securing the conviction of the appellant (Marskole) for an offence he did not commit and perhaps, for shielding [prosecution witness] Dr Hemant Verma, whose involvement in this offence is strongly suspected though there is no material to hold affirmatively against him as he was not on trial,” the court said.

THE CASE