The Supreme Court of India on Friday asked the Bihar government to release the records on the early release of gangster-turned-politician Anand Mohan Singh.
The direction to the Bihar government from the top court came during the hearing of a plea filed by Uma Krishnaiah, wife of G. Krishnaiah, challenging the early release of Singh on 29 April.
Singh was serving tim for abetting the murder of Gopalganj district magistrate G. Krishnaiah in 1994.
The IAS officer was beaten to death by a mob when his vehicle tried to overtake the funeral procession of another gangster-turned-politician from Singh’s party Chhotan Shukla in Muzaffarpur district. The former parliamentarian was found guilty of instigating the mob.
Appearing on behalf of the slain IAS officer’s wife, senior advocate Siddharth Luthra said the state government has changed the policy retrospectively and released him in the case. He requested the bench to direct the state to place entire records of criminal antecedents of Singh and sought the matter to be listed in the month of August.
Notably, in the last hearing on May 8, the top court issued a notice to the federal government and the Bihar state government over the early release of the ex-parliamentarian.
Uma Krishnaiah in her petition had said that life imprisonment meant incarceration for the gangster-turned-politician’s entire natural life and cannot be mechanically interpreted to last just 14 years.
“Life imprisonment, when awarded as a substitute for the death penalty, has to be carried out strictly as directed by the court and would be beyond the application of remission,” she said in her petition before the Supreme Court.
Singh’s release on 27 April was effected by an amendment by the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar state government in the 2012 Bihar Prison Manual.
The government removed the clause whereby “murder of a public servant on duty” disbarred a prisoner from being considered for the remission of a jail term.
However, the release of Singh triggered sharp reactions from politicians, civil servants, and several IAS associations.