Anand Mohan Singh, a gangster turned politician who was serving life imprisonment for the murder of a young Dalit IAS officer, will soon walk free from a Bihar jail.
Anand Mohan may deliver votes to the Mahagathbandhan, of course. But at what cost? Can Sushasan Babu Nitish Kumar, henceforth, hold forth on his commitment to decriminalise governance? Anand Mohan was convicted for the murder of District Magistrate of Gopalganj, G Krishnaiah, who was lynched by a mob mourning the killing of a BPP leader and history-sheeter, Chhotan Shukla, in 1994. The Patna High Court sentenced Mohan to death for abetting the murder of Krishnaiah in 2007. The Supreme Court reduced the sentence to life, while the Bihar government pressed for the death penalty. Nitish Kumar should explain why his government has now gone out on a limb to free Anand Mohan, why did it drop “murder of a public servant on duty” from the category of heinous crimes that was kept outside the purview of remission. How does such deceit square with the moral high ground the Opposition has taken in the 2002 Bilkis Bano case in Gujarat? The Opposition has accused BJP governments in Gandhinagar and Delhi of favouring men convicted for murder and rape for political dividends and has demanded justice for the families of victims.
Kumar is now busy cobbling a Opposition coalition for 2024. His acquiescence to regressive caste lobbies to free a murder convict stains his record in governance. In fact, Kumar’s loyal ally in his battles as CM to impose the rule of law and effect structural changes in Bihar was the bureaucracy. The bureaucrats were his eyes and ears as he fought an ambitious ally, the RJD, and sought to build institutions and infrastructure, take basic services to the people. Anand Mohan Singh’s freedom, achieved through state-sponsored subversion of due process, is also a message to officers that the law will take the course of politics. Anand Mohan is no singular criminal politician, he is representative of an ecosystem wherein crime, caste and politics mingle to form a deadly cocktail. Nitish Kumar ought to have been the Nitish Kumar he once was.
