MUMBAI: Uma Krishnaiah clearly remembers, even after three decades, the last conversation she had with her husband G Krishnaiah — a senior civil servant in the Indian state of Bihar — before he was lynched to death by a mob in 1994 after the death of a gangster.
On December 5, 1994, the couple woke up early because G Krishnaiah had to depart for an important conference in Hajipur, more than 130 kilometres from Bihar.
After a few hours after G Krishnaiah left home for the conference, she found herself in a hospital where her husband’s body was lying. She told the BBC in a choked voice, “He had so many injuries on his body and face.” G Krishnaiah was returning home after attending the meeting when a mob protesting the murder of Chhotan Shukla, a notorious gangster-turned-politician, stopped his car.
Thousands of Shukla supporters attacked the officer’s car with rocks before dragging him out and beginning to beat him. According to Amarnath Tiwari, a journalist in Patna, “Krishnaiah, who was the district magistrate for Gopalganj, attempted to convince the mob that he had nothing to do with the Shukla murder, which occurred in an adjacent district, but he was shot in the head by one man before the mob lynched him. Later, police discovered his bloody body at the crime scene.
The murder turned the life of Mrs Krishnaiah upside down. The heinousness of the crime and the brutality with which her husband was murdered shocked the nation, with the media flashing the news.
Anand Mohan Singh, who was arrested in the murder case was given a life sentence, stepped out of prison this week, bringing the horrific crime back into the public eye.
In the murder case, Singh, a state assembly member at the time, was accused of inciting the mob to attack and shoot the officer. He was found guilty in 2007 of the murder and given the death penalty by a local court.
The Patna High Court turned it into a life sentence a year later, and the Supreme Court upheld the decision in 2012. The Bihar jail manual stated that “those convicted for murdering a public servant on duty” were not eligible for early release with Singh incarcerating in jail until recently.
However, the state government, headed by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, dropped the rule from the manual earlier this month and declared the release of 27 prisoners, including Singh.
The civil servants’ association has urged the Bihar government to reconsider its decision to release Singh.
Some opposition politicians, activists, and citizens criticised the decision. Many have compared Singh’s release with the Gujarat government’s decision last August to free convicts in the despicable gangrape of a Muslim woman and the murder of her family during deadly religious riots in 2002.
According to officials in Gujarat, a state government panel granted the men’s release since they had served more than 14 years in prison and other considerations like their age.
Away from the political ping pong, the Krishnaiah family, for whom the decision to release Singh has reopened old wounds, has seen the decision with dismay.
Mrs Krishnaiah said that in 1981 she met her late husband, a Dalit, at college in Hyderabad. Five years after they started dating, they tied the knot. They were parenting two daughters, ages four and five and a half, at the time of his murder.
A day after his passing, she and her kids returned to Hyderabad, where she started working as a college teacher to care for the family. She had found some solace in Singh’s conviction and sentence, but she was devastated to see him released from jail.
Hours after Singh was released from prison on Thursday morning, her daughter Padma told the news agency ANI that the family was “disappointed.” “I want Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to reconsider the decision as his government has acted inappropriately. She said it was a grave injustice to the family and the entire country. She said that the family would file a legal appeal against the release of Singh.
