NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on Monday a plea challenging remission granted to former Bihar Lok Sabha MP Anand Mohan, who is serving a life term in the 1994 murder case of the then Gopalganj district magistrate, G Krishnaiah.
Uma Krishnaiah, the wife of the deceased magistrate, has moved the top court challenging the Bihar government’s decision to release Mohan prematurely.
A two-judge bench of Justices Surya Kant and KV Viswanathan is set to hear the petition on Monday.
Mohan was released from Bihar’s Saharsa jail in April last year after serving more than 14 years in jail. He was prematurely released and granted remission following an April 10, 2023 amendment to the Bihar prison manual by the state government.
On February 6, the Supreme Court asked Mohan — the gangster-turned-politician of Bihar — to surrender his passport and asked the Centre to make its stand clear on his premature release issue.
The top court had also the former MP to record his presence every fortnight at the local police station. Upon his conviction in the murder case in 1994, Mohan was released after serving more than 14 years in jail, as the Bihar government had, in its notification, ordered to free him.
Terming the notification “not a good decision”, Uma Krishnaiah in her plea said, “It is submitted that it is a well-settled principle of law that Imprisonment for life means full natural course of life and cannot be mechanically interpreted to be 14 years. It means that imprisonment for life lasts until the last breath,” Uma’s petition read.
Krishanaiah, a 1985 batch IAS officer, was only 37 years old when he was killed in Muzaffarpur by a mob led by a few politicians, including Mohan.