K. M. Nanavati v. State of Maharashtra

K. M. Nanavati v. State of Maharashtra
Court	Supreme Court of India
Full case name	K. M. Nanavati v. State of Maharashtra
Case history
Prior actions	Jury's Judgment for defendant, Jury() Trial-Charge-Misdirection-Reference by Judge, High Court Conviction under Sec.302 of the Indian Penal Code
Subsequent action	Appeal dismissed
Court membership
Judges sitting	K. Subbarao, S. K. Das, Raghubar Dayal
Case opinions
Appellant Commander Nanavati, a Naval Officer, was put up on trial under sec. 290 and 304 Part I of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for alleged murder of his wife's paramour. The High Court dismissed the earlier acquittal by a Jury Trial and convicted the accused to life imprisonment under Sec. 302 of IPC.

Commander K. M. Nanavati vs. State of Maharashtra was a 1959 Indian court case where Kawas Manekshaw Nanavati, a Naval Commander, was tried for the murder of Prem Ahuja, his wife's lover. Commander Nanavati, accused under section 302, was initially declared not guilty by a jury, but the verdict was dismissed by the Bombay High Court and the case was retried as a bench trial. The case is often erroneously believed to be the last jury trial in India, but there were several trials afterwards that used juries, some well into the 1960s.^[1] Nanavati was finally pardoned by Vijayalakshmi Pandit, newly appointed Governor of Maharashtra and sister of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.^[2]

The incident received unprecedented media coverage and inspired several books and films such as the 1963 movie Yeh Rastey Hain Pyar Ke, the 1973 film Achanak, the 1983 malayalam movie Asthram, the 2016 film Rustom, and the 2019 web series The Verdict.