Hyderabad: G. Uma Krishnaiah, widow of slain Dalit IAS officer G. Krishnaiah, has requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and stop release of former MP Anand Mohan Singh, who was convicted for the bureaucrat’s lynching.
A day after the Bihar government decided to release Anand Mohan Singh by amending the Bihar prison manual, she said she was shocked by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s move.
Uma Krishnaiah said Modi should intervene and make Nitish Kumar withdraw his decision which will set a bad precedent and have serious repercussions for the entire society. “My husband was an IAS officer and it is the Centre’s responsibility to ensure that justice is done,” she said.
She alleged that Nitish Kumar is releasing killer of her husband for votes of Rajputs and to form a government again.
“He (Nitish Kumar) thinks that by releasing him, he will get votes of all Rajputs and this will help him form the government again. This is wrong,” said Uma, who lives in Hyderabad.
“This goes on in Bihar but this is not good. There should be good people in politics and not criminals like Mohan,” she said.
Krishnaiah, an IAS officer of 1985 batch, was killed on December 5, 1994. Then Gopalganj District Magistrate, he was killed by a mob allegedly provoked by Anand Mohan Singh. The mob, which was protesting with the body of Chhotan Shukla, a gangster-politician of Anand Mohan’s party, who was killed a day earlier, dragged Krishnaiah out of his car and lynched him.
Anand Mohan Singh was sentenced to death by a lower court in 2007, but the Patna High Court commuted the penalty to life imprisonment in 2008. He has been in jail for 15 years.
The widow of the slain bureaucrat said that she was not happy when he was awarded life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. “Now it is heartbreaking for me that he being released even before completing the sentence,” she said
Uma Krishnaiah, who had moved to Hyderabad a few days after losing her husband, said the Rajput community should also think if a criminal like Anand Mohan Singh can do any good to them and to the society.
She believes that this action of Nitish Kumar will embolden criminals to take law into their hands. Uma Krishnaiah, 60, is of the view that release of Mohan may endanger the lives of civil servants and government officers discharging their duties honestly as the criminals will think that they can take law into their hands and do whatever they want and come out of jail.
She revealed that some IAS officers of 1985 batch are in touch with her and they were contemplating to move the Patna High Court or the Supreme Court to challenge the decision of Nitish Kumar government.
It was a life full of struggle for Uma Krishnaiah. After losing her husband, she had moved to Hyderabad with two daughters, aged 7 and 5. The family was traumatised after what it had to go through.
She took up the job of lecturer in a college in Hyderabad to look after the family. She was allotted a house site in Prashasan Nagar in Jubilee Hills, where she constructed her house.
Retiring in 2017, she ensured good education for both the daughters, who are currently employed as a bank manager and a software engineer.
–IANS