The Supreme Court on Thursday sentenced former Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MLA Vijay Kumar Shukla alias Munna Shukla and one other to life imprisonment in the 1998 murder of former Bihar minister Brij Bihari Prasad. The top court, however, upheld the acquittal of former MP Surajbhan Singh and six others in the case.
A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna, Sanjay Kumar, and R Mahadevan pronounced the order after hearing appeals challenging the Patna High Court's decision acquitting former Singh and eight others in a murder case of former Bihar Minister Brij Bihari Prasad in 1998. The court awarded life imprisonment to Shukla along with another accused Mantu Tiwari. Meanwhile, Surajbhan Singh alias Suraj Singh, Mukesh Singh, Lallan Singh, Captain Sunil Singh, Ram Niranjan Choudhary, Shashi Kumar Rai, and Rajan Tiwari were acquitted.
On August 22, the Supreme Court reserved the order on the appeals filed by the late minister's wife Rama Devi and the CBI. Rama Devi and the Central Bureau of Investigation challenged the Patna High Court's July 2014 decision, whereby it acquitted all accused for lack of evidence. The high court gave the benefit of the doubt to the nine people convicted by Patna's then additional sessions judge-III Vijay Prakash Mishra. They were sentenced to life imprisonment by the trial court on August 12, 2009.
The high court had directed Mantu Tiwari, Vijay Kumar Shukla and Rajan Tiwari, who were in jail at the time, to be released. Others including Surajbhan Singh, Mukesh Singh, Lallan Singh, Captain Sunil Singh, Ram Niranjan Choudhary, and Shashi Kumar Rai were already on bail in the case at that time.
Bihar's then science and technology minister Prasad was shot on June 13, 1998, on the premises of Patna's Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences where he was undergoing treatment under judicial custody. A policeman had also died in the firing.