The wife of slain IAS officer G Krishnaiah, who was lynched by a mob led by former Bihar MP Anand Mohan in 1994, has moved the Supreme Court challenging his premature release from prison. Anand Mohan Singh, a gangster-turned-politician, was on Thursday released from Saharsa jail in Patna after being behind bars for 15 years following an amendment in Bihar's prison rules.
Uma Krishnaiah, the wife of G Krishnaiah, has contended that the sentence of life imprisonment awarded to the gangster-turned-politician meant incarceration for his entire natural course of life and it cannot be mechanically interpreted to last just 14 years.
“Life imprisonment, when awarded as a substitute for death penalty, has to be carried out strictly as directed by the court and would be beyond application of remission,” she said in her petition before the Supreme Court.
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Earlier, Padma Krishnaiah, the daughter of the IAS officer, appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene about the release of Anand Mohan Singh.
"I would request PM Narendra Modi ji -- such people should not come back into society. I do not have the power to fight this... please bring a law so that such gangsters and mafia cannot roam free in Bihar or any other state. Please reconsider the situation," she told NDTV in an exclusive interview.
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's law department earlier this week as they had spent more than 14 years behind bars.
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The remission of his sentence followed an April 10 amendment to the Bihar Prison Manual, 2012, removing a clause that said those convicted for murder of a public servant on duty could not be given remission of their jail term.
This, the critics of the state government claim, was done to facilitate the release of Mohan, a Rajput strongman, who could add heft to the grand alliance led by Nitish Kumar in its fight against the BJP. Several others, including politicians, benefited from the amendment to the state prison rules.
Born and brought up in present-day Telangana, Krishnaiah, 37 at the time of his death, belonged to a Dalit family. He was beaten to death by a mob in 1994 when his vehicle tried to overtake the funeral procession of gangster Chhotan Shukla in Muzaffarpur district. Mohan, then an MLA, was leading the procession.
(With inputs from PTI)
