Hyderabad: A murder convict who jumped parole more than four decades ago and went on to become a government schoolteacher, even winning a best teacher award along the way, has lost his bid before the Telangana High Court to avoid returning to prison to serve out his sentence.
Sandela Veeranna, now in his late 70s, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1983 for a murder committed in the late 1970s. He was out on parole within six months of beginning his term and simply never went back.
It took a special task force of the state Prisons Department, working with Mahabubabad Police, until May 2024 to finally trace him and lodge him in Cherlapally Central Prison.
Wife’s plea for release turned down
His wife, Sandela Charamma, moved the High Court challenging his continued custody and the repeated denial of parole over the past three years on medical and compassionate grounds. Justice T Madhavi Devi dismissed the plea and did not mince words while doing so.
The judge noted that Veeranna had concealed his criminal background and prior conviction to enter government service, calling this fact alone telling. His government job and the uninterrupted years he put in, she held, indicated that he had obtained the post through deception.
Teaching career built on hidden past
What makes the case unique is how ordinary Veeranna’s life looked from the outside during his decades on the run. He settled comfortably in Danthalappally in Mahabubabad district, landed a government teaching post, was honoured with a best teacher award in 2004 and retired from service in 2013, all the while remaining, technically, an absconding convict.
Charamma, herself a retired government employee, argued in her petition that making her husband serve the remainder of his term after such a lengthy gap amounted to an arbitrary decision, and that he had never been properly heard on the question of whether he had actually violated his parole.
She told the court their son lives permanently in the UK, leaving no one to care for the couple, and that Veeranna’s health was deteriorating and required specialised treatment that only release could ensure.
The government pleader for Home, Mahesh Raje, pushed back, telling the court that Veeranna had deliberately stayed away after his parole ended and that the department had sent out multiple communications over the years in its effort to trace and arrest him. Adequate medical facilities, including specialised care, were available to inmates at Cherlapally, he added.
High Court raps prison department
The High Court sided with the state on the substance of the case, even as it took prison authorities to task. Justice Devi observed that failing to track down an absconding convict for more than 40 years reflected poorly on the administration, and directed officials to draw up formal guidelines and set up a system for monitoring prisoners out on parole, along with special task forces to keep watch on them going forward.
The bench also rejected the argument that Veeranna had been denied a chance to explain himself over the parole violation, pointing out that he had been issued a show-cause notice and given a hearing before his release plea was turned down.
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