Wife of slain IAS officer challenges release of Anand Mohan in SC

Hyderabad: Uma Krishnaiah, wife of slain IAS officer G. Krishnaiah, moved the Supreme Court on Saturday challenging the release of former Bihar MP Anand Mohan, who was convicted of her husband’s murder in 1994.

Challenging the early release of  Mohan following the Bihar government’s amending the jail rules, she filed a petition before the apex court to set aside the release.

A convict of a charge of murder of a public servant on duty cannot be reclassified to a less heinous category, she mentioned in the petition. This rule was changed.  

“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 14 years. It means that imprisonment for life lasts until the last breath,” read her petition.

She also raised the point that a life imprisonment, when awarded as a substitute for death penalty, has to be carried out as directed by the court and would be beyond application of remission.

Krishnaiah, a 1985 batch IAS officer was from Mahbubnagar district. When he was serving as magistrate of Gopalgunj, he was lynched by a mob led by Anand Mohan on December 5, 1994.

In 2007, a court convicted seven people and the remaining 29 were acquitted. Mohan was later handed the death penalty, but in the very next year, the Patna High Court commuted it to life imprisonment. He was released recently following the state government’s amendments to jail rules.