A petition has been filed in the Patna High Court, challenging the amendment to Bihar's prison rules that facilitated the release of Anand Mohan, a gangster-turned-politician, after serving life sentence for killing an IAS officer three decades ago.
Mohan, who had been an MP prior to his conviction in 2007, was released from Saharsa jail on Thursday morning. The petitioner, Anupam Kumar Suman, shared the information on his Twitter handle, along with screenshots of e-filing of the Public Interest Litigation on Wednesday.
"I yesterday filed a PIL in the high court challenging the dangerous (khatarnaak) amendment that allowed for remission of sentence awarded to a convict in murder of a government servant in Bihar," Suman wrote in Hindi.
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Mohan's name figured in a list of more than 20 prisoners who were ordered to be set free by a notification issued by the state law department earlier this week as they had spent more than 14 years behind bars.
His remission of sentence followed an April 10 amendment of Bihar Prison Manual by the Nitish Kumar government whereby the restriction on early release of those involved in killing of a public servant on duty was done away with. This, critics claim was done to help release Mohan.
Incidentally, Suman is a former civil servant himself who took voluntary retirement from Indian Revenue Services a few years ago to take the political plunge. "May justice and the rule of law prevail. Satyamev Jayate", Suman added with a rhetorical flourish, avoiding the mention of the name of Anand Mohan, whose release has evoked protests from family members and well-wishers of the slain IAS officer G Krishnaiah.
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Krishnaiah, who hailed from Telangana, was beaten to death by a mob in 1994 when his vehicle tried to overtake a funeral procession in Muzaffarpur district. Mohan, who was the sitting MLA from Mahishi, was leading the procession taken out upon the death of his close associate Chhotan Shukla, another dreaded gangster who fell to bullets of his rivals before realising his political ambitions.
Notably, Suman is widely remembered for his tenure as Patna's Municipal Commissioner. He was indicted for the huge water-logging in the city in 2019, after a few days of heavy rainfall.
The 2004-batch IRS officer was served with a show cause notice well after quitting service and he reacted by alleging that his higher ups, including Chief Minister Nitish Kumar himself, shared the blame for the havoc wrought in the state capital.
Suman is associated with Plurals Party, founded and headed by Pushpam Priya Choudhary, an intriguing figure about whom little is known except that her father was formerly an MLC of Nitish Kumar's JD(U) and she fought the 2020 assembly polls as the "chief ministerial candidate" of her fledgling outfit.
