‘Shoot him’ – as many as 10 witnesses deposed before court that this is what Bihar’s strongman Anand Mohan ordered his aide Bhutkan Shukla and the latter shot dead a District Magistrate G Krishnaiyyah on December 5, 1994 in Muzzafarpur. A trial court sentenced him to death while the high court and the Supreme Court said he should face rigorous imprisonment for life only because Anand Mohan did not fire the shots himself.
Now, nearly 29 years after the shocking incident, the Nitish Kumar government has ordered the release of Anand Mohan from jail, especially amending the jail manual which will allow for such remission for convicts who have murdered public servants.
Mohan, a former Lok Sabha MP, is a Rajput ‘leader’ with his son being a RJD MLA, and hence, the release is being seen as more of a political move than a legal one ever since the JD(U) and RJD joined hands last year and there has been pressure on the alliance to release Anand Mohan from jail. Mohan is already out on parole for the engagement of his son and CM Nitish Kumar and Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav attended the engagement ceremony on Monday and met Mohan who was present. The order to release him came on Monday as well, which Anand Mohan’s family has described as a ‘perfect gift’ from the administration for Anand Mohan. Anand Mohan spent little over 15 years in jail and will formally walk free in a day’s time.
However, it was the administration against which Mohan had revolted in 1994 after a candidate of his party was killed before the state elections. The District Magistrate of Gopalganj, G Krishnaiyyah was his target because he “represented the state administration” as per the Supreme Court judgment in 2012. Krishnaiyyah was a Dalit officer who was shot dead by one Bhutkun Shukla in the presence of Anand Mohan and the SC judgment says it was done on Mohan’s orders.
“Ten out of the 14 witnesses who were accompanying the procession and were near the place of occurrence have given a consistent version that Mohan exhorted Bhutkun Shukla to shoot at the deceased,” the SC order said. The release of Anand Mohan is already getting flak from various quarters with the BJP questioning if this is the model of ‘jungle raj’ that Nitish Kumar wants to portray in Bihar.
What the SC ruled
Chhotan Shukla was a candidate in the ensuing state assembly elections on behalf of the Bihar Peoples Party led by Anand Mohan in 1994. On December 4, 1994, Chhotan Shukla and his four associates were killed by some unknown persons in Muzaffarpur. Mohan led a procession with the bodies the next day as a show of political strength. The SC recorded the police story that provocative speeches delivered by Mohan at the Bhagwanpur Chowk aroused the emotions in the crowd of almost 5,000 people to take revenge by bloodshed and this was the cause for the violence on the car of the District Magistrate which was coming from the opposite direction when the procession reached Village Khabra.
The prosecution submitted that the violent crowd pulled out the occupants of the car, beat them, overturned the car and finally Bhutkun Shukla shot the district magistrate on the exhortation of Anand Mohan because the deceased represented the state administration.
While the trial court sentenced Mohan to death, the high court reduced this to life imprisonment and recorded that Mohan alone exhorted the lone shooter to kill the deceased. The high court has held that though the deceased was a District Magistrate, he was killed in another district as an occupant of a car by chance on account of mob fury and exhortation by Mohan, and as Mohan was not the assailant himself, death sentence would not be the appropriate sentence.
The SC agreed with the high court’s view on the same and sentenced Mohan in 2012 to rigorous imprisonment for life. Now, Nitish Kumar has let him free.
Read all the Latest India News here
Comments
0 comment