After the release of former Bihar MP Anand Mohan, the wife of slain IAS officer G Krishnaiah, who was lynched by a mob led by him in 1994, has moved the Supreme Court challenging his premature release from prison, as reported by the news agency PTI. Mohan was released from Saharsa jail on Thursday morning 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 apex court, as quoted by PTI.
Mohan's name was 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. The remission of his sentence followed an April 10 amendment to the Bihar Prison Manual by the Nitish Kumar government whereby the restriction on early release of those involved in killing of a public servant on duty was done away with.
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, as reported by PTI. Krishnaiah, who hailed from Telangana, 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.