Auto Shankar was the leader of a gang that ran illicit liquor and a brothel in Thiruvanmiyur, then on the southern edge of Madras, in the 1980s. In 1991 a sessions court at Chengalpattu convicted him of six murders committed between October 1987 and May 1988 and sentenced him to death, together with two of his associates. The dead were a woman who had lived with him, the man she left him for, that man's friend, and three men from another part of the city who had clashed with his gang in the street. The Madras High Court and the Supreme Court of India upheld his conviction and sentence.
His name is attached to a second case. While he was under sentence of death he wrote an account of his life and arranged for it to be published in a Tamil magazine. Prison officials tried to stop it, saying he had not written it. The magazine's editor took the dispute to the Supreme Court, and the judgment in R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, delivered in October 1994, set out a right to privacy under the Indian Constitution and held that the state had no power to stop the press from publishing in advance. A Madras High Court judgment of 2007 records that Shankar was later executed, and Amnesty International lists his execution in 1995.
The Supreme Court judgment of April 1994 names him as Shankar, also called Gauri Shankar, and the courts refer to him throughout as Auto Shankar. The judgments do not give his date or place of birth, and no reliable report gives them either.
According to the prosecution case set out by the Supreme Court, he started out driving an auto-rickshaw, moved into illicit arrack (a distilled liquor), and then handed the liquor business to his younger brother, Mohan, so that he could run a brothel with a number of women working for him. A 2008 Madras High Court judgment adds that he had also worked as a painter. Five men named in the case, Eldin (also called Albert), Shivaji, Jayavelu, Raman (also called Raja Raman) and a man named Ravi (not the victim of the same name), helped him in these businesses, the prosecution said. Eldin had married Shankar's younger sister.
The prosecution described him as violent toward the women who worked for him and toward anyone who got in the way of his business. Several women had left him, the judgment records, and he kept women in separate houses. The courts treated the brothel as the background to the killings, not as part of the charges.
Lalitha, the first of the six people he was convicted of killing, worked in his brothel and became involved with him, according to the Supreme Court's account of the prosecution case. He set her up in a separate house and gave her money. The 2008 High Court judgment says she joined the brothel in 1987 and that Sudalai, an associate of Shankar's, lived in another part of the same house. Lalitha and Sudalai became involved with each other and left together, taking about 7,300 rupees and Shankar's camera.
Shankar searched for them. The evidence differed on exactly how Lalitha was found, the Supreme Court noted, but she was brought back. The prosecution said he was enraged by the betrayal and by the customers he was losing to a rival brothel that Sudalai had started.
On October 28, 1987, according to the charge, Lalitha was strangled in Periyar Nagar, Madras, and her body was hidden. The prosecution said Shankar, Eldin, Shivaji and Shankar's brother Mohan took part. The man who later became the chief prosecution witness was not present at this killing, so the case on it rested on the confessions of Shankar and Eldin and on other evidence. The Supreme Court found those confessions true, voluntary and corroborated on material points.
Sudalai was killed about four months later. The Supreme Court placed his death around late February 1988, and the 2008 High Court judgment gives February 28, 1988. According to the chief prosecution witness, who took part, Shankar told him to bring Sudalai to the house. There Shankar, Eldin, Shivaji, Mohan and the witness gave Sudalai drink and then strangled him. His body has never been recovered.
Ravi was Sudalai's friend. After Sudalai vanished he began asking questions, demanded money, and threatened to go to the local police inspector, according to the prosecution. Shankar regarded this as blackmail. In March 1988, the prosecution said, Shankar, Eldin, Shivaji, Mohan and the chief prosecution witness strangled Ravi in Thiruvanmiyur and hid his body. The 2008 judgment dates his death to March 14, 1988. His body was later recovered and identified.
To explain Ravi's absence, the gang had a letter forged so that it would appear he had gone to Bombay, the Supreme Court recorded. The prosecution said the gang also washed away blood, threatened witnesses, had a room repainted and offered a false story that a bed had caught fire.
The last three deaths came out of a street fight. Sampath, Mohan and Govindaraj were from Mandhaveli, another part of Madras. (The victim Mohan is a different man from Shankar's brother Mohan; the Supreme Court distinguishes them.) The prosecution said the three had been causing trouble for women who worked in the brothel and pressing local lodges to stop allowing prostitution. On May 29, 1988, in a street in Thiruvanmiyur, they pulled one of the women out of an auto-rickshaw and assaulted Eldin when he intervened.
Shankar and his associates then beat the three men, the Supreme Court recorded, and all three died. Their bodies were hidden and later recovered. The judgments give no ages or occupations for the three men.
At the 2008 appeal of one of the men later tried for these killings, his lawyer argued that the three men had been harassing a young woman connected to Shankar, and that the deaths were not intended. The High Court rejected that argument and upheld the murder convictions.
The families of the missing men went to the police almost at once. According to the Supreme Court, Ravi's brother asked Shankar what had become of the men and was told they had left after a fight. On May 31, 1988, two days after the street fight, Ravi's brother went to the Thiruvanmiyur police station. The circle inspector sent him away, telling him a constable had reported that no such incident had happened. He then complained at the Abiramapuram police station, where the case was registered as a man-missing case. The 2008 High Court judgment, which comes from the separate trial of Shankar's brother, describes the first complaint of May 31 as made by the elder brother of Sampath. The two judgments may be describing different relatives' complaints made the same day; neither reconciles them.
On June 7, 1988 relatives took the matter to a deputy superintendent of police, and the next day a complaint was registered at the Thiruvanmiyur station. Ravi's mother and his wife also gave statements; the 2008 judgment dates his mother's complaint to July 3, 1988.
The question of police protection ran through the case. The chief prosecution witness testified that a relative of the Thiruvanmiyur inspector and the inspector himself had tried to shield the gang, and the Supreme Court judgment notes evidence that Shankar had paid a constable 100 rupees and that an inspector had told him when Sudalai was arrested. These were allegations made in testimony and in the confessions; the Supreme Court did not make findings on them, and no police officer was a defendant in the murder case.
Shankar was arrested on June 27, 1988 and released on bail, the Supreme Court recorded. On July 6, 1988 police arrested a member of the gang at the Tambaram bus stand. He confessed and, according to the 2008 High Court judgment, pointed out Shankar and Jayavelu, who were arrested in turn. On July 15, 1988 the investigation was taken over by the Crime Branch, Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID) of the Tamil Nadu police, under an inspector of that branch.
Remains were recovered on the basis of information from Shankar and from the accomplice who had confessed, and post-mortem examinations followed. Jewelry and other belongings of the dead were recovered at the accused men's direction, which is why the charges included a count of dishonestly taking a dead person's property. Eldin was arrested on August 15, 1988.
Shankar made a confession before a judicial magistrate, and Eldin made one before another magistrate. Both later retracted their confessions. The accomplice who had first confessed made a formal statement before a chief judicial magistrate on December 21, 1988 and was granted a pardon in exchange for his evidence. He became the chief prosecution witness, known in the court record as PW 1, the approver.
The case was tried in pieces. Shankar's brother Mohan, who had been arrested and had confessed, escaped from custody, and so did another accused man, Selvam (also called Selva or Selvaraj). Their cases were split off from the main trial. Shankar, Eldin, Shivaji and five others were tried before the Principal Sessions Court at Chengalpattu, the 2008 High Court judgment records. Mohan and Selvam were tried separately years later.
At the main trial the prosecution relied on the approver, on eyewitnesses to parts of the events, on forensic evidence and recoveries, and on the evidence about the May 29 street fight. One of the women who testified was found by the courts to have been Shankar's mistress, not his legal wife. That finding mattered: the defense argued that her evidence was barred by the rule protecting communications between husband and wife, and both the High Court and the Supreme Court rejected the argument because she was not married to him.
Shankar did not stay in jail for the whole of his trial. On the night of August 20, 1990, five prisoners escaped from a cell in the Madras Central Prison, according to a 2007 Madras High Court judgment on the escape. Shankar was one of them. The escape was discovered at roll call the next morning. The prosecution case was that warders and others had conspired to help Shankar and his associates get out. One warder, who had been in charge of locking the cell that night, was found not to have made sure it was properly locked.
He was caught in Orissa (now Odisha). A sub-inspector of the Orissa police testified that, acting on a tip, officers raided a house at about 6 p.m. on September 1, 1990 and found Shankar at his father's home. His wife was arrested with him. Both were brought before a sub-divisional judicial magistrate in Orissa and then taken back to Madras.
The same judgment records that two of the other escapees were later found working at a hotel in Pune and were arrested there in January 1992.
The Chengalpattu court convicted all eight men tried before it. The Supreme Court records that each was found guilty of murder (Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code read with Section 34, which covers acts done with a common intention), of causing evidence to disappear (Section 201), of rioting (Section 147) and of dishonestly taking the property of the dead (Section 404), along with a charge of criminal conspiracy. Shankar, Eldin and Shivaji were sentenced to death for each murder. Jayavelu, Raman, Ravi and the two remaining men were sentenced to life imprisonment.
The Supreme Court judgment of October 1994 in the press case gives the date of Shankar's conviction and death sentence as May 31, 1991. An Amnesty International urgent action issued in September 1992 gives May 30, 1991, and names the court as the Chengalpattu District and Sessions Court.
On July 17, 1992 the Madras High Court confirmed the death sentences on Shankar, Eldin and Shivaji. It acquitted two of the eight men, P. and P., of all charges. It also acquitted every accused of the charge of conspiracy to murder, while upholding the remaining convictions and sentences. Both the trial court and the High Court found that the case fell within the "rarest of rare" category in which Indian law allows a death sentence.
The executions of the three men were set for September 7, 1992. On September 3 the High Court stayed them so that they could appeal to the Supreme Court, according to Amnesty International, which issued an urgent appeal asking that the sentences be commuted to life imprisonment.
The appeal of Shankar and five of his co-accused was decided on April 4, 1994 by Justices K. Jayachandra Reddy and G. N. Ray. (The press-case judgment later that year dates the dismissal to April 5.) The defense attacked the approver's evidence and the retracted confessions. The court applied the usual double test for an approver, asking first whether he was reliable and then whether his account was backed by independent evidence on material points. It found his account of the motive and the killings corroborated by eyewitnesses, by forensic evidence, by the recoveries and by the evidence of the street fight.
The court considered the retracted confessions on their own. It held that they had been made voluntarily and were corroborated, and rejected the argument that the High Court had wrongly used them to prop up the approver. It held that the guilt of Shankar and the five other appellants for the murders of all six victims had been proved, finding that Shankar, Eldin and Shivaji took part in the killings of Sudalai and Ravi, that Shankar's and Eldin's confessions established the killing of Lalitha, and that all six appellants took part in the deaths of Sampath, Mohan and Govindaraj.
On sentence, the court set out the principles from its earlier rulings, including Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980), under which death is reserved for the "rarest of rare cases." It described the killings as "coldblooded" and "diabolic in conception." The available copies of the judgment break off before the operative order. The press-case judgment of October 1994 states that the appeal was dismissed and that a mercy petition from Shankar to the President of India was pending. The 2008 Madras High Court judgment refers to the Supreme Court having modified Shivaji's death sentence to life imprisonment, and records a defense submission that the Supreme Court upheld the death sentences on Shankar and Eldin.
By then Shankar had written an account of his own life. According to the Supreme Court's later judgment, he wrote an autobiography of about 300 pages while held in the Chengalpattu sub-jail in 1991, the year of his conviction, and handed it to his wife, with the knowledge of the jail authorities, to pass to his lawyer. He asked that it be published in Nakkheeran, a Tamil weekly magazine published from Madras.
Nakkheeran announced the series in its issue of May 21, 1994. The magazine's editors later told the Supreme Court that the announcement alarmed police and prison officials, who "were afraid that their links with the condemned prisoner would be exposed," and that Shankar was pressured into writing letters disowning the publication. The state denied any pressure.
On June 15, 1994 the Inspector General of Prisons wrote to the editor. The letter said the serial "is not really written by Gauri Shankar but it is written by someone else in his name," disputed the power of attorney the magazine relied on, called the publication unlawful, asked the magazine to stop, and warned of possible legal action, including for blackmail. Nakkheeran published parts of the account in its issues of June 11, 18 and 22, 1994, and then stopped.
The editor and publisher of Nakkheeran, R. Rajagopal, and the magazine's associate editor petitioned the Supreme Court directly under Article 32 of the Constitution, which allows citizens to go to that court to enforce fundamental rights. The respondents were the State of Tamil Nadu, the Inspector General of Prisons and the Superintendent of the Central Prison, Salem, where Shankar was then held. Neither Shankar nor his wife was a party.
Justices B. P. Jeevan Reddy and S. C. Sen heard the case, and Justice Jeevan Reddy wrote the judgment, delivered on October 7, 1994. The court made clear that it was not deciding who had written the autobiography; its treatment of the manuscript as Shankar's, it said, was "only an assumption for the purpose of this writ petition and not a finding of fact."
The court then set out a series of principles. "The right to privacy is implicit in the right to life and liberty guaranteed to the citizens of this country," it held, under Article 21 of the Constitution. Publishing matters of a person's private life, such as family, marriage, procreation and education, without consent could give rise to a claim for damages, unless the person had voluntarily invited controversy. Material drawn from public records, including court records, was generally open to publication, with an exception for the identity of victims of sexual assault. Public officials could not claim privacy over their official conduct and could recover damages only if a publication was made with reckless disregard for the truth. Governments and government bodies could not sue for defamation. The press remained bound by the Official Secrets Act. And no law gave the state or its officials power to impose a prior restraint on the press; any remedy came after publication.
Applying those principles, the court held that the magazine could publish what appeared in the public record about Shankar, but that going beyond it could invade his privacy and expose the magazine to liability. The state could not stop publication in advance, and the prison officials could not act on Shankar's behalf without his authority. "The writ petition is accordingly allowed in the above terms," the judgment concluded.
The ruling has been cited in many later decisions. The Columbia University Global Freedom of Expression project lists among the cases citing it Shreya Singhal v. Union of India and Justice K. S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India. The project classifies the judgment as one that expanded freedom of expression.
The judgments do not give the date or place of Shankar's execution. The 2007 Madras High Court judgment on the jail escape refers to him as having "subsequently been executed," and in a 2012 open letter on the resumption of executions in India, Amnesty International listed the execution of "Shankar" in 1995 as one whose details had been public in advance. When the press case was decided in October 1994 he was in the custody of the Superintendent of the Central Prison, Salem. A specific date and place of hanging appear in popular accounts but the court records do not confirm them.
The 2007 judgment also states that three of the five men who escaped in 1990, including Shankar, were executed. It does not name the other two, and none of the other judgments records any other execution in the case.
Shankar's younger brother Mohan and Selvam were tried long after Shankar's case had ended. Their trial took place before the I Additional Sessions Court in Chennai. The prosecution examined 57 witnesses and relied on 181 exhibits and 127 material objects; the accused denied the evidence and called no witnesses. On November 25, 2005 the court convicted both men.
Mohan was convicted of all six murders, of causing evidence to disappear in four of the deaths, and of rioting. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for each murder. The court ordered that the life terms for Lalitha and for the three men killed on May 29, 1988 run together, while the life terms for Sudalai and for Ravi each run separately, so that he received three consecutive life sentences. Selvam was convicted of the murders of Sampath, Mohan and Govindaraj and of rioting, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Both appealed. Mohan's lawyer did not contest the convictions but argued that the three consecutive life terms were unlawful and that Mohan, who had by then been in custody for about 18 years, should be treated like Shivaji. He told the court that Shivaji's death sentence had been reduced to life by the Supreme Court, that Shivaji faced no consecutive terms, and that he had been released on remission after about 14 years. Selvam's lawyer argued that his client had only struck the men with a stick and had not meant to kill anyone.
On September 25, 2008 Justices M. Chockalingam and M. Venugopal of the Madras High Court dismissed both appeals. They held that Mohan had acted as his brother's "right hand" and had taken "a prominent role" in the killings, so his case could not be compared with Shivaji's. Given the gravity of six murders, they refused to give him credit for the time he had already served before trial, and they upheld the three consecutive life terms.
The 1990 jailbreak led to its own prosecution, which ran in the courts until 2007. A case against eight accused, including prison warders, was heard by the II Metropolitan Magistrate at Egmore, Chennai. On May 3, 2002 the magistrate convicted a former warder of criminal conspiracy and of a public servant's intentional omission to keep a prisoner in custody (Sections 120-B and 222(3) of the Indian Penal Code, the latter concerning public servants and the escape of persons in custody) and sentenced him to six months of rigorous imprisonment on each count, to run together. His appeal to a sessions court was dismissed in August 2003.
On June 6, 2007 Justice A. C. Arumugaperumal Adityan of the Madras High Court upheld the warder's conviction. Because the man was 72 and had already spent about a month in custody, the judge reduced his sentence to the time he had already served. The judgment does not record the outcome for the other accused.
Shankar's case has been retold on screen. In 2019 the streaming service ZEE5 released a Tamil web series named after him; The Statesman, reporting its launch, described the real case as six murders committed by Shankar and his gang and noted that he and two associates, Eldin and Shivaji, were sentenced to death. The series is a dramatization.
The Rajagopal judgment is the most lasting legal result of the case. It is cited as a privacy and press-freedom ruling, and it is the only Supreme Court record of the dispute over the condemned prisoner's manuscript and the prison officials' letter.
The number of victims. The courts dealt with six deaths: Lalitha, Sudalai, Ravi, Sampath, Mohan and Govindaraj. The Supreme Court's press-case judgment says Shankar "was charged and tried for as many as six murders." A claim that he abducted and killed nine teenage girls circulates widely in popular retellings. None of the judgments mentions any such killings, and no charge, confession in court or police finding about them was reported. The claim is unproven.
Protection by officials. The Nakkheeran editors alleged in the Supreme Court that police and prison officials feared exposure of their links with Shankar, and the approver testified about protection from police at Thiruvanmiyur. The state denied pressuring Shankar, and no court was reported to have made findings about any official's links with him.
Authorship of the autobiography. The Inspector General of Prisons said someone else had written the serial in Shankar's name. The Supreme Court expressly declined to decide the question.
The date of the death sentence. May 31, 1991 (Supreme Court, 1994) or May 30, 1991 (Amnesty International, 1992).
The date of the Supreme Court appeal judgment. April 4, 1994 (the judgment itself) or April 5, 1994 (the press-case judgment).
The fates of Eldin and Shivaji. The 2008 High Court judgment refers to Shivaji's death sentence being reduced to life imprisonment, and a defense lawyer told that court that Shivaji had been released on remission after about 14 years and that Eldin's death sentence had been upheld. Whether Eldin was executed was not reported.
The execution. The courts and Amnesty International record that Shankar was executed, and Amnesty places it in 1995. The court records do not give the exact date or the prison where he was hanged.
October 28, 1987: Lalitha is killed in Periyar Nagar, Madras.
About late February 1988 (February 28, according to the 2008 High Court judgment): Sudalai is killed.
March 1988 (March 14, according to the 2008 judgment): Ravi is killed in Thiruvanmiyur.
May 29, 1988: Sampath, Mohan and Govindaraj are killed after a street fight in Thiruvanmiyur.
May 31, 1988: a relative of the missing men is turned away at the Thiruvanmiyur police station; a man-missing case is registered at Abiramapuram.
June 8, 1988: a complaint is registered at Thiruvanmiyur after relatives go to a deputy superintendent of police.
June 27, 1988: Shankar is arrested and released on bail.
July 6, 1988: a gang member is arrested, confesses and later becomes the approver; Shankar is arrested again.
July 15, 1988: the CB-CID takes over the investigation.
August 15, 1988: Eldin is arrested.
December 21, 1988: the approver makes a formal statement before a chief judicial magistrate and is pardoned.
August 20, 1990: Shankar and four other prisoners escape from the Madras Central Prison.
September 1, 1990: Shankar is recaptured at his father's house in Orissa.
1991: Shankar writes his autobiography in the Chengalpattu sub-jail.
May 31, 1991: the Chengalpattu court convicts Shankar of six murders and sentences him, Eldin and Shivaji to death (Amnesty International gives May 30).
January 1992: two other escapees are arrested in Pune.
July 17, 1992: the Madras High Court confirms the death sentences and acquits two co-accused.
September 3, 1992: the High Court stays executions set for September 7.
April 4, 1994: the Supreme Court decides the appeal of Shankar and five co-accused.
May 21, 1994: Nakkheeran announces the serialization of his autobiography.
June 11 to 22, 1994: three installments appear; on June 15 the Inspector General of Prisons writes to the editor.
October 7, 1994: the Supreme Court decides R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu; a mercy petition from Shankar is pending.
1995: Shankar is executed (Amnesty International, 2012).
May 3, 2002: a former warder is convicted over the 1990 escape.
November 25, 2005: Shankar's brother Mohan is convicted of the six murders and given three consecutive life terms; Selvam is convicted of three murders.
June 6, 2007: the Madras High Court upholds the warder's conviction and reduces his sentence.
September 25, 2008: the Madras High Court dismisses the appeals of Mohan and Selvam.
2019: ZEE5 releases a Tamil web series about the case.