UP Polls 2017: Video opposition from Amanmani Tripathi’s ‘mother-in-law’

The two-minute videos, Singh said, tells people how Amanmani allegedly got her daughter killed last year, and then cooked up a story of a road accident. The CBI had recently filed a chargesheet naming Amanmani in the Sara Singh murder case.

Amanmani’s parents —- former UP minister and four-time SP legislator from Nautanwa Amarmani Tripathi and mother Madhumani – are both lodged in Gorakhpur jail after they were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the murder of poet Madhumita Shukla. Amanmani’s election campaign is being supervised by his elder sisters Tanushree and Alankrita, and uncle Ajeetmani Tripathi.

“I have made an appeal to the people through the two videos to not vote for Amanmani. I made the videos on my cellphone in Lucknow and forwarded them to an acquaintance in Maharajganj district on WhatsApp,” Seema Singh said. “I have requested the person, who is apolitical, to circulate the videos among the people so that my appeal is conveyed.”

Singh said she will not go to Nautanwa.

Amanmani had contested the 2012 election also from the same constituency on a Samajwadi Party ticket and had lost to Kaushal Kishore Singh, an Independent candidate by just over 8,000 votes. In a role reversal of sorts, Kaushal Kishore is the SP candidate from the seat this time.

“I have heard about the videos released by Sara’s mother. I have not seen them yet. We will reply to these videos if we find they are making any impact on the voters,” Amanmani’s uncle Ajeetmani said. He said there are no indications of any impact as yet.

“We are fighting the election on the plank of development Amarmani Tripathi brought in the area as legislator from this constituency on four occasions – 1989, 1996, 2002 and 2007,” he said.

There are 24 candidates in fray from Nautanwa, which has about 3.2 lakh voters with a majority families from OBC communities. The constituency goes to the polls on March 4.

Maharajganj district is located on the India-Nepal border, and Nautanwa Assembly segment is surrounded from three sides by Nepal. The Sunauli border entry point to Nepal is in Nautanwa.

In its chargesheet filed on February 18, the CBI held Amanmani guilty of killing his wife by strangulation with a “premeditated plan” of getting rid of her, and portraying a “fake” road accident as the cause of her death.