"I also had no clothes to wear when I was as old as these children. That is why I feel for these poor people so much," said the Dalit IAS officer who was killed

When she pointed at a few children running naked on the road while they were driving in the backward West Champaran district of Bihar, her husband G Krishnaiah, who was then the district collector there, laughed and said, ‘‘I also had no clothes to wear when I was their age. That is why I feel for these poor people so much. There is so much to do for them.’’
When his wife complained one day that he was never home, Krishnaiah, then freshly posted at Gopalganj, showed uncharacteristic irritation. ‘‘There are so many poor and despondent people out there. And there is a lot of work to be done for them,’’ he said.
Sitting in her simple two-room flat at the Officers Transit Hostel in Hyderabad, Krishnaiah’s wife Uma is not certain if she is happy even after the court verdict. But she is definitely sad that her husband’s zeal to work for the poor was abruptly cut short.
On October 3, the Patna trial court sentenced to death former MP Anand Mohan and two other politicians, former MLA Akhlaq Ahmad and Arun Kumar Singh, for the murder of Krishnaiah in 1994.
Anand Mohan’s wife Lovely, also a former MP, and three leaders of the ruling JD (U) — MLA Vijay Kumar Shukla aka Munna Shukla, Harendra Kumar and Sashi Shekhar Thakur — were awarded life terms.
‘‘As sub-collector in Hazaribagh or joint collector in Jehanabad and later as collector in West Champaran and Gopalganj, distressed by the poverty and deprivation of people there, Krishnaiah would talk of new ways and schemes, of doing this and that, to give them some relief and hope,’’ remembers Uma.
‘‘Even on that cold December 5 morning when I found him taking a walk outside the bungalow at 4 am and asked him to wear a sweater, he dismissed it and told me that all the street children must have spent the night in the cold without a shred of clothing so it was fine when he did the same,’’ Uma says.
In his position as district collector, Krishnaiah saw the opportunity to help the poor. ‘‘He would stay in office till late if there were people waiting to meet him. Since the law and order situation was not all that good I was a little concerned about his safety. But 13 years ago I always thought that since this man worked so hard and since he had such goodwill and a reputation as an upright, honest and hardworking officer, no one would even think of harming him. He would take exception to MPs or MLAs walking into the house without permission, which would anger them but he would dismiss my fears saying he never did anything wrong or harmed anyone,’’ says Uma.
But that day in December proved them wrong.
‘‘Whether it was Hazaribagh or Gopalganj he had good relations with other IAS and IPS officers. In fact, it was Abhay Anand, who was SP in Gopalganj at the time (now Additional DG Headquarters), who rang me up after the court verdict.’’
The verdict takes her back to Gopalganj. A few hours after their brief exchange on that chilly morning, Krishnaiah, 35, was pleading for mercy when gangster Bhatkun Shukla shot him dead. ‘‘He left home at 4:45 am and that was the last time I spoke to him. He never returned,’’ Uma says, her eyes suddenly distant and her mind going back to that morning.
‘‘It has shaken my belief that if you are upright and honest no one will harm you,’’ she says and adds, ‘‘Krishnaiah did not harm anyone. He was killed so brutally even though he had nothing to do with whatever happened in the neighbouring district.’’
The fear has never left Uma since. ‘‘Now, I don’t want the media to publish my daughters’ photos because even after all these years and especially after the court verdict I am afraid someone may come from Bihar and harm them to take revenge though I have not filed any case against them.’’
As an afterthought she adds: ‘‘When emotions are running high and people are angry, funeral processions like the one they had taken out that day should not be allowed. Many innocents will get killed if something goes wrong.’’ Krishnaiah had been attacked by a mob at the funeral procession of don-politician Chhotan Shukla.
Then, the woman who put up a brave face and struggled to live after the brutal murder of her husband, springs back to the present.
‘‘I want my children to study and get good jobs, but I have never discussed joining the civil services with them. You never know what might happen. Even my children, who don’t remember much about their father and what happened to him, don’t discuss this subject with me,’’ she says.
That is probably because the two daughters have seen their mother struggle to raise them.
‘‘I was in a shock for several days, there was no time for tears or anger. I had two little daughters to take care of. Niharika was 7 and Padma was 5 and I not only had to take care of them but also my husband’s ageing mother. We moved to Hyderabad and the Government gave us this flat in the Officers’ Transit Hostel. Then started the struggle to make both ends meet because one day I was in the cocoon of a DM’s bungalow and the next I was uprooted and was trying to find my feet in Hyderabad,’’ says Uma.
> ‘‘With my meagre income as a teacher and whatever interest we earned on the fixed deposits in the children’s name it was difficult to make both ends meet. I wanted to give my children good education and better life and for nearly 10 years it was simply a struggle,’’ she says, holding back tears.
‘‘Krishnaiah belonged to an even poorer and deprived community than I did. Except for him no one in his village has even studied beyond Class 4. Since he was good at studies he could get into Social Welfare schools and hostels, first in his native village Undavelli where he studied up to Class 7 and later at Gadwal. It was through welfare schemes and scholarships that he completed his BSc degree in Gadwal where we met. Later he completed his MA in English literature at Osmania University in Hyderabad,’’ she remembers.
‘‘Even today his cousins and their sons and other relatives work as construction labourers. So I could not expect any support from his family side. My father was a simple teacher. On my family’s side, there was nothing I could get from them except moral support. When I got a job in the Government Degree College for Women, Begumpet, I grabbed it although I was leaving my two children in the care of my mother and mother-in-law,’’ she says. ‘‘Today I am a lecturer there and my children have also done well.’’ Elder daughter Niharika is a third-year engineering student and younger Padma is in class 12.
‘‘All these years I was too busy with my own life and bringing up my children and never bothered to find out what was happening to the case in Bihar. We had forgotten all about it until senior IPS officer Abhay Anand called up. Justice may have been done although I think other legal processes are still pending. But, for us nothing has changed or will after this verdict,’’ says Uma.

His mother doesn’t remember anything now. She can’t recognise him in the photograph. But sometimes she asks them to take her to him
She worked on farms and construction sites and even when her son became the district magistrate of Gopalganj, she continued to live simply. Now G Yankamma remembers nothing but occasionally calls out for the son she lost 13 years ago

For over an hour G Yankamma, 72, held the framed photo in both her hands and struggled to recognise the person staring back at her. After turning it around several times she ventured a guess. ‘‘Murthy?’’ she asks, voice quivering.
The photograph is of her youngest son G Krishnaiah, the collector and district magistrate of Gopalganj in Bihar. He had been dragged out of his car and shot on December 5, 1994, near Khabra near Muzaffarpur.
You can’t say if it is the shock of losing her favourite son when he was only 35 or the brutal manner in which he was murdered or a memory disorder or simply age that has reduced Yankamma to this. Yankamma does not register anything these days but even today, whenever she looks at any man the age of her son when he was killed, it sets her off talking.
She can go on like this for an hour, muttering incoherently, asking questions that no one can understand. Or answer.
But in 1993, a year before Krishnaiah’s death, she was an alert, sprightly woman who knew her mind and didn’t hesitate to speak it.
For instance, she never lost an opportunity to scold her son affectionately if she saw more than one official car outside his bungalow.
She was a simple woman, who despite having worked for years as a farm hand and sometimes as a construction worker, refused to enjoy the luxuries of a district magistrate’s house.
Today, her speech is incoherent and she has become a recluse, grieving all by herself in a corner of the two-room house in Hyderabad.
‘‘She doesn’t remember anything now. She cannot recognise Krishnaiah in his photograph or recollect his name. But sometimes she does ask me to take her to him,’’ says Uma.
‘‘He is away in some distant land she says, and insists on being taken there on the rare occasion that she remembers him. Then she forgets all about him,’’ says Uma.
But Uma remembers the times they all spent ogether in Bihar.
‘‘She stayed with us when we were in Gopalganj. We had a small field there at the collector’s bungalow where we had grown some vegetables. She insisted on working there. She would work there in the field for several hours and in the evening, when Krishnaiah returned home from work, she would walk up to him take Rs 50 from him as wages,’’ remembers Uma.
‘‘And she would scold him for keeping cars and servants at home. ‘If the vehicles belong to someone, go and return them,’ she would tell him.’’
Krishnaiah’s father died in 1991. Belonging to the poorest section of the Dalit community in Undavelli village in Bailapuram and working as labourers, their finances improved only after their elder son joined as a junior assistant in the Commercial Tax Department and partly financed his younger brother’s education.
Yankamma was already 50 when Krishnaiah became an Indian Administrative Service officer in 1985. Though she refused to be pampered and live comfortably in official bungalows, things changed forever for Yankamma on December 5, 1994, when she lost her son to the fury of a mob.
She now lives in the two-room flat at the Officers Transit Hostel in the heart of Hyderabad where she shares her meals with her daughter-in-law and two granddaughters.
It’s a regular family scene except that her son who worked hard to make this possible is no longer around to be a part of it.