Umesh Reddy is the name by which the Indian press knows B. A. Umesh, a former constable from Chitradurga district in Karnataka. His reputation rests on police statements that he committed killings and sexual offences across three states between 1996 and 2002. What a court has found is narrower and more exact. A Bengaluru fast track court convicted him on October 26, 2006 of rape, murder and robbery in a single case, a woman's death in the Peenya area of Bengaluru on February 28, 1998, and sentenced him to death. That conviction was upheld by the Karnataka High Court and the Supreme Court of India. The death sentence was then commuted by the Supreme Court on November 4, 2022, on the ground that he had spent about ten years in solitary confinement while waiting for execution.
The gap between the police account and the court record is the central fact of the case. Police have said he confessed to 18 killings and have counted 20 or more sexual offences. Press reports repeat that he was convicted in nine cases. The judgments and orders that carry his name recount one case in detail and refer to others only in general terms.
Umesh Reddy comes from Chitradurga district in central Karnataka. The South First news site reported that he served as a constable in the Central Reserve Police Force, posted in Jammu and Kashmir in the late 1990s, and faced an allegation there. He left the Kashmir Valley soon afterward and was dismissed from the force. The IANS wire service, in a report printed by The Tribune in 2021, gave a different version, in which he deserted, joined the Karnataka Reserve Police, and was dismissed after a woman identified him at a Republic Day police parade. Both accounts agree that he did not stay in service, and both come from police recollections reported years later, not from a court finding.
The South First report adds that he returned to Chitradurga and joined the District Armed Reserve without disclosing why he had left the central force. In 1997, a sub-inspector at Kalasipalya police station in Bengaluru detained him on a petty theft complaint, and officers from another station then identified him as a man wanted in several cases. The outcome of that detention is not on record.
The Supreme Court of India's judgments of 2011 and 2022 and the Karnataka High Court's order of 2024 describe the one case that produced his death sentence. On February 28, 1998, a woman was killed in the Peenya area of Bengaluru. The News Minute described her as a 37-year-old woman. The case was registered as Crime No. 108 of 1998 at Peenya police station.
He was arrested on March 2, 1998. The Supreme Court's 2011 judgment records that on that day, two days after the offences in Peenya, he was held by members of the public over an alleged attempted robbery of another woman. That episode was an allegation, not a conviction in the Peenya case, and the Court used it only as a circumstance in its reasoning on sentence. The judgment also records that items recovered from his house connected him with offences at other premises, and that the High Court had taken into account earlier convictions and punishment in cases of robbery, dacoity and rape. The judgment does not name or describe those earlier cases.
He was charged under sections 376 (rape), 302 (murder) and 392 (robbery) of the Indian Penal Code. The case was tried as Sessions Case No. 725 of 1999 before the Sessions Judge, Fast Track Court VII, Bengaluru City. He pleaded not guilty. The prosecution examined 29 witnesses and the defense called none.
On October 26, 2006, the trial court convicted him on all three counts. According to the Supreme Court's 2011 judgment, it sentenced him to 7 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of 25,000 rupees for rape, 10 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of 25,000 rupees for robbery, and death for murder. Under section 366 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a death sentence must be confirmed by the High Court, and the case went up as Criminal Reference No. 3 of 2006. His own appeal was registered as Criminal Appeal No. 2408 of 2006. The Supreme Court's 2022 judgment dates the death sentence to October 27, 2006, a day after the conviction; the 2011 judgment dates the whole judgment to October 26.
IANS, in a report printed by The Tribune, said he was moved from Bengaluru Central Prison to a separate death row barrack at Hindalga prison in Belagavi on October 26, 2006.
The reference and the appeal were heard together by a two-judge bench of the Karnataka High Court, and the judges disagreed on sentence. Justice V. G. Sabhahit confirmed the death sentence. Justice R. B. Naik agreed on the conviction but would have substituted life imprisonment. Under the court's procedure the disagreement went to a third judge, Justice S. R. Bannurmath, who agreed with Justice Sabhahit and confirmed the death sentence on February 18, 2009, according to the Supreme Court's 2011 judgment. Deccan Herald dated the split to October 4, 2007, and LiveLaw's account of the 2021 proceedings gives the same date for the High Court's decision on the conviction.
The appeals reached the Supreme Court of India as Criminal Appeal Nos. 285 and 286 of 2011. A bench of Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice A. K. Patnaik decided them on February 1, 2011. The Court dismissed the appeals, confirmed the convictions under sections 376, 392 and 302, and confirmed the death sentence.
On sentence, the Court held that the case fell within the "rarest of rare" category in which the death penalty is permitted, found no mitigating circumstances of the kind listed in its earlier decisions, and regarded his record and conduct, including the offense alleged on the day of his arrest, as showing that he was a danger to society and unlikely to be rehabilitated. The judgment confirms one conviction for one killing. It does not record a second conviction for murder.
After the Supreme Court's decision he sought clemency. The Supreme Court's 2022 judgment records that a mercy petition was filed on February 8, 2011. LiveLaw's report of the High Court proceedings says it was filed by his mother before the President. The Governor of Karnataka rejected the petition on June 6, 2012, and the President rejected it on May 12, 2013; the Court recorded the communication of the President's decision as May 15, 2013, and a Leaflet report of the 2022 hearings gives May 17, 2013 in one place and May 12 in another. The News Minute's 2016 report dates the mother's petition to February 2012 and the Karnataka cabinet's rejection to May 2012, which does not match the Supreme Court's dates.
A review petition was filed in the Supreme Court in 2011. According to the 2022 judgment it was first dismissed by circulation on September 7, 2011, then heard again in open court by a three-judge bench and dismissed on October 3, 2016. A writ petition filed in the Supreme Court in March 2011 had earlier produced a stay of execution, and the Karnataka High Court stayed execution again on October 20, 2016, when he petitioned it for commutation.
His petition to the Karnataka High Court, Writ Petition No. 53944 of 2016, argued that the delay in deciding the mercy petition, which he put at about 827 days, violated Article 21 of the Constitution, and that he had been held in solitary confinement. It was heard by Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Pradeep Singh Yerur, who dismissed it on September 29, 2021.
According to LiveLaw, the court found about a year and a half of avoidable delay, mostly on the part of the State executive. Applying the Supreme Court's decision in Triveniben v. State of Gujarat, which leaves out time spent on judicial proceedings, it held that this delay could not be counted, and that even counting from the Supreme Court's decision of February 1, 2011 the delay of about one year and five months was not inordinate. The court declined to fix an outer time limit for the executive's power of pardon. On solitary confinement, it distinguished separation from segregation and found that his confinement did not amount to solitary confinement. The Union told the court that after an initial diagnosis of depression and psychosis he had been found fit following treatment. Deccan Herald reported that he was given six weeks to go to the Supreme Court.
He appealed. On January 31, 2022, a bench of Justice U. U. Lalit, Justice S. Ravindra Bhat and Justice P. S. Narasimha stayed the execution, holding, in LiveLaw's words, that a medical condition is a relevant supervening circumstance. The Court directed the State to produce the probation officer's reports and asked the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru to form a team to evaluate him psychologically.
On April 21, 2022, the bench directed the District Judge of Belagavi to inspect the prison's death row barracks and report. According to The Leaflet's account of the hearing on April 26, 2022, the report found that from 2006 until the High Court's stay in October 2016 he had been held in a block of 12 single cells, let out only for two yoga camps and one prayer event over eleven years. The bench, relying on counsel's submissions, treated this as solitary confinement within the meaning of Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration (1978). The Union argued that there is no fixed formula for inordinate delay and that the President had called for his medical records. The State argued that delay could not be judged in isolation. Justice Bhat spoke of the mental agony of waiting for execution. Judgment was reserved.
The Court delivered its judgment on November 4, 2022, in B. A. Umesh v. Union of India (Criminal Appeal No. 1892 of 2022, arising out of Special Leave Petition (Criminal) No. 890 of 2022), with Chief Justice Lalit writing for the bench. It rejected the argument on delay. The Leaflet reported that the Court held a delay of about two years and three months in the mercy petition was not inordinate. It accepted the case on solitary confinement: a letter from the medical officer at Belagavi prison dated November 6, 2011 had recorded psychosis with depression, and the Court found that he had been kept in solitary confinement from his admission in 2006, in breach of the Sunil Batra decision, with conditions relaxed gradually from 2016.
The Court allowed the appeal and commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment. It imposed what it called a rider, that he "shall undergo minimum sentence of 30 years," and that any application for remission would be considered on its merits only after actual imprisonment of 30 years. It added that if no remission were granted, "the sentence of imprisonment for life shall mean till the remainder of his life," citing Gopal Vinayak Godse v. State of Maharashtra. The ruling left the conviction and the finding of guilt untouched. It also did not enlarge the case: the judgment refers only to the 1998 Peenya offences.
In 2023 he applied for 30 days of parole to look after his ailing mother and repair her house. The chief superintendent of the prison rejected the request on September 23, 2023, and a police report dated December 8, 2023 said that past enmity could endanger his life if he were released. By then he had been transferred from Hindalga to the Parappana Agrahara Central Prison in Bengaluru.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna of the Karnataka High Court dismissed his petition (Writ Petition No. 23950 of 2023) on February 16, 2024. The order recites that an imprisonment certificate showed he had served 26 years. The judge held, relying on Asfaq v. State of Rajasthan (2017), that the 30-year rider did not automatically bar parole, but that parole is not granted "for the asking," that two brothers could care for the mother and the house, and that the public interest on the other side could not be ignored. LiveLaw reported the decision on February 28, 2024.
In November 2025, videos circulated that appeared to show prisoners at Parappana Agrahara using mobile phones. The News Minute reported on November 9, 2025 that Umesh Reddy was among those shown, using two Android phones and a keypad phone, and that the prison department had ordered a departmental inquiry. The News Minute described him as accused of 18 murders and 20 rapes between 1996 and 2002 and as convicted in nine cases with a sentence of 30 years. What, if anything, was decided about him personally is not on record.
Established by court records: a conviction on October 26, 2006 for rape, murder and robbery in Crime No. 108 of 1998; a death sentence, confirmed in 2009 and 2011; a mercy petition rejected in 2012 and 2013; a commutation to life imprisonment with a 30-year minimum on November 4, 2022.
Stated by police or press, and not itemized in any court record:
Confession to 18 killings. South First and IANS (in The Tribune) attribute this to police; South First says "rapes" where IANS says "killings," and the News Minute's 2025 reports speak of 18 murders and 20 rapes as accusations.
Convictions in nine cases. IANS, South First and the News Minute repeat it. South First quotes an advocate, Siji Malayil, who said eight other cases and several murder cases involved convictions. The Tribune's account does not itemize the nine. In 2016 the News Minute cited a Deccan Herald report of 2009 giving 25 cases, with 10 acquittals and 9 convictions, and also listed other counts in circulation at various times (7, 15 and 19 cases). No court record itemizes any of these cases or the outcome of any of them other than the Peenya case.
Alleged killings after an escape from custody, in Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Baroda and Kunigal. IANS attributes these to police and gives no dates or outcomes.
Escapes. South First and the News Minute report that he escaped police custody on at least one occasion and a high-security prison on another, and that he was arrested in 2002 after escaping on a journey from Ballari to Bengaluru. No court finding on these events has been reported.
The Supreme Court's 2011 judgment refers to earlier convictions for robbery, dacoity and rape without naming them. The judgment does not describe any of them as a killing.
1996 to 2002: period in which police and press accuse him of offences in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
1997: detained in Bengaluru on a theft complaint (South First).
February 28, 1998: the offences in Peenya, Bengaluru.
March 2, 1998: arrested; Crime No. 108 of 1998.
2002: arrested again after an escape (News Minute, 2016).
October 26, 2006: convicted by Fast Track Court VII, Bengaluru; death sentence recorded October 27.
October 2007: Karnataka High Court bench divides on sentence.
February 18, 2009: third High Court judge confirms the death sentence.
February 1, 2011: Supreme Court dismisses the appeals and confirms the sentence.
February 8, 2011: mercy petition filed.
June 6, 2012: Governor of Karnataka rejects the petition.
May 12, 2013: President rejects the petition.
October 3, 2016: Supreme Court dismisses the review petition.
October 20, 2016: Karnataka High Court stays execution.
September 29, 2021: Karnataka High Court dismisses the writ petition.
January 31, 2022: Supreme Court stays execution.
November 4, 2022: Supreme Court commutes the sentence to life imprisonment, minimum 30 years.
February 16, 2024: Karnataka High Court refuses parole.
November 9, 2025: prison videos and inquiry reported.