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Journalism of Courage
IT had all the makings of a B-grade Bollywood potboiler: A young woman, a powerful man, illicit romance, trips around the country8230; and, finally, murder.
More than two years after poetess Madhumita Shukla was killed in her Paper Mill residence in Lucknow, the case remains lost in illogical convolutions. The Mayawati government, seriously compromised by the alleged involvement of Bahujan Samaj Party MLA and former minister Amarmani Tripathi in the case, has been voted out; in its place is the rule of arch-rival Mulayam Singh Yadav8212;to whom, ironically, Tripathi shifted allegiance alongwith 39 other BSP MLAs.
That8217;s not the only movement in the case. Mayawati ordered a CBI inquiry into the case in June 2003. Police and CBI investigations led to the arrest of three people8212;Rohit Chaturvedi, Santosh Rai and Vinod Pandey8212;for shooting Madhumita on the evening of May 9. All three are currently in jail.
Tripathi and his wife Madhumani, who were named co-conspirators in the case, were also arrested and sent to jail; both are currently out on bail. The case drags on in the sessions court in Lucknow.
Meanwhile, in Lakhimpur-Kheri, Shanti Devi Shukla and Nidhi8212;Madhumita8217;s mother and sister8212;complain of threats and coercion. The two even met UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi in April this year to complain of the slow pace of the developments and the pressure they faced.
THE Madhumita saga began when the struggling poetess met Amarmani, already a high-profile politician, at a kavi sammelan in Gorakhpur in 1992. The two reportedly grew closer over the next few months, with Tripathi openly accompanying Madhumita to gatherings in Mumbai and Jaipur.
Right after the murder, her family alleged that Madhumita had been killed at Amarmani8217;s say-so, since she was getting possessive about him. Adding fuel to the fire was the discovery that she was three months pregnant at the time of her death.
The foetus has been preserved by the forensic authorities, but answers to questions about the identity of its father are as remote as they were on May 9, 2003.
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To confuse the issue further, Tripathi8217;s men alleged one Ankit Mishra, a Kanpur-based engineering student, was Madhumita8217;s husband, and even presented a pujari who testified that he had indeed married the two. But investigations proved the claim to be a fake; Mishra8217;s only contact with Madhumita was in his role as an organiser of kavi sammelans at IIT, Kanpur.
Further, the police seized Madhumita8217;s personal diary, in which she had held forth on her love for Tripathi, as well as her pain and anguish at being ignored by him. The CBI8212;in charge of the case ever since the CB-CID team appointed on May 13, 2003, failed to meet Mayawati8217;s deadline of May 31 for submission of a report8212;arrested Tripathi in August 2003, just three months after he was sacked from the cabinet.
Madhumani, Tripathi8217;s wife, surrendered in court four months later. But with the CBI failing to prove they had conspired to kill the poetess, it wasn8217;t long before the husband-wife duo was released on bail.
THE case lurched from one date to another for close to two years till May 2005, when the CBI transferred it to the sessions court in Lucknow. The trial, though, is yet to begin.
On Wednesday, Tripathi and another accused, Santosh Rai, moved separate revision petitions in the court to revert the case to a lower court on the grounds that the proceedings so far had not been in compliance with the law: Despite their request, they had not received photocopies of various documents like the forensic report and photographs.
Sessions judge Shiv Charan Sharma dismissed the plea, and directed them to submit an application in court for the required documents.
While Tripathi was not available for comment, Madhumita8217;s sister Nidhi told The Sunday Express that her family was being stalked.
8216;8216;The situation has come to such a pass, we have to keep moving all the time. Amarmani8217;s men are everywhere, even the police are not to be trusted. Some time ago, two men close to Tripathi offered us Rs 1 crore to shut up. We still hope for justice, but we just wish things could be speeded up,8217;8217; said Nidhi.
