Supreme Court upholds ex-MP's life term in DM's murder case

After the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Patna High Court order of life-term to former MP Anand Mohan for his involvement in the murder of Gopalganj District Magistrate (DM) G Krishnaiah, the muscleman-turned-politician will continue to cool his heels behind the bars in Saharsa Jail.

A bench of Justices A K Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar also upheld the acquittal of his wife Lovely Anand, also an ex-Parliamentarian and five others in the case. The court rejected the plea of the Bihar government seeking award of death penalty against Singh and also did not find any merit in the appeal against acquittal of other accused in the case.

“As A-1 (Singh) was not the assailant himself, death sentence would not be the appropriate sentence. We agree with this view of the high court and we are of the view that this was not one of those rarest of rare cases where the high court should have confirmed the death sentence on him. In our considered opinion, he was liable for rigorous imprisonment for life,” the bench said.

The Patna High Court had commuted death sentence of Singh, former MP from Sheohar, to life imprisonment in December 2008 verdict and absolved all other accused-- former state minister Akhlaq Ahmed, former MLA Arun Kumar, MLA from Lalganj V K Shukla alias Munna Shukla, Shashi Shekhar and Harendra Kumar.

Singh, the then leader of Bihar People’s Party (BPP) had incited an agitated mob gathered in the funeral procession of Chottan Shukla, a party leader leader to kill Krishnaiah on December 5, 1994. Shukla was gunned down by some unknown criminals.

Krishnaiah, a 1985 batch officer, came from a humble background in Andhra Pradesh, where his father was a construction worker. He was posted as Gopalganj DM and on December 5, 1994 was returning to his district after attending a meeting at Hajipur. On seeing his beacon-fitted car, the mob, accompanying the cortege of Chotan Shukla, went berserk and took law into their hands on the provocation of the leaders assembled on the occasion. The December 1994 killing of the DM had apparently shaken the Bihar government, with the IAS Association demanding of then CM Lalu Prasad a CBI probe into the murder.