“Auto” Shankar

Who Auto Shankar was

Gowri Shankar, widely known as "Auto" Shankar, was born in Vellore and moved to Madras, now Chennai, where he worked for a time as an auto-rickshaw driver, which gave him his nickname. The News Minute describes a troubled childhood in which both parents left the family, and early drug use while he was still at school. By the 1980s, according to journalists who covered him, he was running illicit liquor and a prostitution business in the city.

The killings

Shankar was charged with six murders. Reporting by The News Minute links three of the deaths to a dispute over a young woman from a brothel on LB Road, with the bodies later recovered by police after being hidden. Two further victims were Lalitha, a cabaret performer he had met on Mount Road, and his friend Sudalaimuthu, with whom she had left; police later exhumed Lalitha's remains in Periyar Nagar.

Around the same period, the disappearance of several young women in Madras had led police in 1988 to consider whether a serial offender was at work. The News Minute reports that the case became public in July 1988, when newspapers began writing about Shankar. Claims that he was connected to the missing young women, and his reported late statement that they had been taken at the request of politicians, were never proved in court and should be treated as unverified.

Investigation and allegations of protection

The inquiry quickly raised questions beyond the killings themselves. Journalists reported that police officers and politicians had attended a house-warming at Shankar's home, which he recorded on video, and that he was said to hold images of influential customers. Police were reported to have seized material that may later have been destroyed. No politician was ever publicly identified as having protected him, and the extent of any official complicity has never been established by a court.

Earlier accounts of the case, including the previous version of this page, describe Shankar escaping from prison in 1990 and being recaptured. That episode is widely repeated, but it could not be confirmed in the reputable sources reviewed for this update, so it is not detailed here.

Trial, appeals and execution

According to the Supreme Court of India's later judgment, the Sessions Judge at Chengalpattu convicted Shankar and sentenced him to death on 31 May 1991. The Madras High Court confirmed the death sentence on 17 July 1992, and the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal on 5 April 1994. A mercy petition to the President was then pending. He was hanged at Salem prison on 27 April 1995. DT Next reported that associates were also hanged at Salem in 1995.

In prison he reportedly became a Christian and read the Bible, and The News Minute reports that even at the end he believed a last-minute call might stop the execution.

The autobiography and the press freedom case

While awaiting execution, Shankar wrote an account of his life of roughly 300 pages and asked the Tamil magazine Nakkheeran to publish it. The magazine's editor and publishers told the Supreme Court that the manuscript named senior IAS and IPS officers and others, some allegedly his partners in crime; the state denied this and the court did not rule on those claims. According to the petitioners, prison officials forced Shankar to write asking the magazine not to publish, and the editors went to court to stop officials interfering.

In R. Rajagopal v. State of Tamil Nadu, decided by Justices B.P. Jeevan Reddy and S.C. Sen on 7 October 1994, the Supreme Court held that a right to privacy is implicit in Article 21 of the Constitution, but that material in public records, such as court records, can be published without consent. It ruled that the state and its officials have no power to impose prior restraint on the press, that government bodies cannot sue for defamation, and that public officials seeking damages over reporting on their official conduct must show reckless disregard for the truth or malice. (One case database gives the decision date as 10 July 1994; the judgment text gives 7 October.) The series was published.

Later developments

In August 2024 the Tamil Nadu government told the Madras High Court that Shankar's brother, life convict "Auto" Mohan, had been granted premature release on account of the 115th birth anniversary of former Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai. DT Next reported that Mohan had served more than 32 years of a triple life sentence in Tiruchy Central Prison and was released under conditions including probation supervision and restrictions on movement. The disclosure came as the court heard a petition from his wife seeking his release.

Why the case matters

The Auto Shankar case remains one of Tamil Nadu's most notorious criminal cases, not only for the killings but for what it exposed about the ties alleged between organised crime, police and politics in late-1980s Madras. Its most lasting effect, however, is legal. The Rajagopal judgment became a foundation of Indian law on privacy and press freedom: it is binding on lower courts, it set limits on what the state can do to suppress reporting, and it was later cited in landmark rulings including Shreya Singhal v. Union of India and the Puttaswamy privacy decision. A prisoner's memoir thus helped shape how Indian courts balance a person's private life against the public's right to know.