On Wednesday, April 12, the Kamrup-Metro district and sessions court in Guwahati remitted Govind Singhal’s life sentence for his part in the murder of Shweta Agarwal.
The Gauhati high court ordered a retrial of the case in a lower court, which was done in the Kamrup-Metro district and sessions court in Guwahati.
Prior to that, a fast-track court had found Govind Singhal guilty of murdering Shweta Agarwal and given him the death penalty.
The Shweta Agarwal murder case, which shook Assam in 2017, also saw the mother and sister of Govind Singhal exonerated by the Gauhati high court.
On December 4, 2017, the burned body of Shweta Agarwal, a fifth-semester BCom student at the KC Das Commerce College, was discovered in the bathtub of the Singhals’ leased residence in the Bharalumukh neighbourhood of Guwahati, Assam.
2015’s Assam AHSEC Class 12 test saw Shweta Agarwal come out on top in the commerce section.
Govind Singhal admitted to the crime, went over the pre- and post-murder circumstances with the police, and described how he later attempted to hide the murder by placing the body in a gunny bag and setting it ablaze.