A small dusty pouch dangles from the carrier of Satish Pawar’s motorcycle. Inside is a roll-up chessboard and plastic pieces.
Pawar, 31, who has a FIDE (as the international chess federation is called) rating of 1587 in rapid chess, has been key to Pune’s Yerawada prison winning a gold and a bronze in intercontinental chess championship for prisoners.
He is also a murder convict serving a life sentence, currently out on bail as the Bombay High Court hears his appeal against his conviction.
But for chess, says Pawar, his life would have spiralled out of control. “Prison is not a happy place. People arrive there after the darkest chapters of their lives, and within those walls the mind often drifts toward negative thoughts. If not for chess, I might have slipped further down the wrong path. The game gave me purpose – and a positive direction.”
Pawar, whose family hails from Vairag village in Barshi, had just turned 18 and was pursuing a civil engineering diploma in May 2014 when he was arrested along with 17 others for the murder of a distant relative amid a long-standing family rivalry. In 2019, they were all sentenced to life by a court in Barshi.
The 31-year-old rarely speaks about the case, besides saying: “That was a dark period of my life.”
Chess was not something that he actively pursued at the time. “I had played chess in school, and taken part in some competitions, but looking back, I realise my game was crude — mostly about capturing the opponent’s pieces.” Then came prison and a return to the board.
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“I was lodged in Barshi Sub Jail and later Solapur District Jail between 2014 and 2019 (as an undertrial). Both jails offered chess as a recreational activity, and I kept playing my same crude game with fellow inmates,” Pawar says.
After he was convicted in 2019, Pawar was moved to the high-security Yerawada Central Prison in Pune. While life as a convict meant more discipline, chess continued.
Amid the deadly second wave of Covid-19 in 2021, Maharashtra released hundreds of undertrials and convicts on emergency bail and parole to ease overcrowding. Pawar was granted parole for good behaviour.
He says the 60-day period “changed my life”. He got married while out on parole, and after returning to prison, was picked up for an Indian Oil Corporation (IOC)-run social stewardship programme titled ‘Parivartan: Prison to Pride’ in jails across the country, led by Chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya.
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The programme was aimed at promoting chess as a reformative activity.
In 2022, when a team was picked for the Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners, organised by FIDE and the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois, US, Pawar was one of those selected from Yerawada prison.
The mentor of the programme, Grandmaster Abhijit Kunte, brought in chess trainer Ketan Khaire to coach the team.
Khaire says Pawar stood out. “He was a natural pick given his basic grasp of the game. He was among six players selected for advanced training, where we introduced them to tactics, openings, middlegames and endgames.” All six selected were life convicts, and one focus of Khaire’s training was improving their concentration.
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“Khaire sir and his team gave us books, made us understand theory. It completely changed my game. I started thinking strategically and learned to not get distracted,” says Pawar.
In the 2022 Intercontinental Online Chess Championship for Prisoners, the Yerawada team clinched a bronze. In 2023, they improved it to gold, with Pawar a key member in both victories. In 2024, by which time Pawar was out on bail and no longer in the team, it slipped to fourth spot in the championships, before climbing back to first place in 2025.
A year after getting bail from the Bombay High Court in 2024, Pawar competed in a FIDE-rated rapid chess tournament in Pune. He defeated four rated players, boosting his rapid chess rating to 1587 – which indicates strong club-level skills.
As Yerawada chess team members coach a pool of over 200 inmates now, Pawar is hoping to improve his FIDE rankings with more games in Pune. However, the father of a one-year-old girl now, realises he can only spare limited time for chess. “I must support my family, and look after our construction and earthmover business. Competitive chess demands hours of practice. So I play on my phone, carry a portable board, and coach local kids.”
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He also nurses a dream. “At the age of 1, my daughter is already playing with chess pieces, treating them as toys and ‘putting them to sleep’. That’s a good beginning… I am not sure how high I will go in my FIDE rating, but my dream is to see her becoming a grandmaster.”
