As 2 women fight on for ‘justice’, a battle lost: Aman Mani Tripathi gets BSP ticket

Singh says that in the letters to political leaders, “I said that if people like Aman Mani and his parents come to power, they would damage the society and also harm the public.”

Shukla says she met senior leaders of the BJP, Samajwadi Party and NISHAD Party with the request to not field Aman Mani. “But they did not make any promises.”

Then, a week ago, she heard that Aman Mani was meeting leaders of the BSP and they had promised him a ticket from Nautanwa. “I have been making efforts to meet BSP leaders since, but failed. Two days back, I came to know Seema Singh is also raising objections over Aman Mani’s ticket, so I contacted her,” says Shukla.

On Thursday, they both came together to the BSP headquarters in Lucknow in the morning. “We requested them to arrange a meeting for us with any senior leader, including Mayawati, Satish Mishra and Mewa Lal Gautam. After people there said they couldn’t help us, we decided to hold a silent protest at the gate of the party office,” says Shukla.

Later, police asked them to move.

The Nautanwa seat, which goes to polls on March 3, has around 3.5 lakh voters, dominated by OBCs and Scheduled Castes who number around 52,000 and 55,000, respectively. There are around 42,000 Muslim voters.

While in 2012, Aman Mani had contested as an SP candidate from Nautanwa and lost, he won in 2017 by 32,256 votes over his nearest rival, the SP’s Kunwar Kaushal Kishore Singh.

“In the last Assembly election, Aman Mani was in jail with his parents. His family members, including his uncle and sisters, pleaded with the public with folded hands to help them. Because of sympathy votes, Aman Mani won,” says Veerendra, who is also contesting from Nautanwa as an Independent.

The SP has again fielded Kishore Singh from the seat. The Congress candidate is Sada Mohan, while the NISHAD Party’s nominee is Rishi. The Aam Aadmi Party also has a candidate here, Bechan.

BSP spokesperson Faizan Khan said the ticket to Aman Mani was decided by a party committee. “The case of Nidhi Shukla and Seema Singh is their family matter. The party has nothing to do with their case.”

In February 2017, in a chargesheet against Aman Mani, the CBI had held him guilty of killing Sara by strangulation in 2015, as part of a “premeditated plan”. Sara had been found dead under mysterious circumstances in Firozabad district, with Aman Mani claiming their car had had an accident on the way to New Delhi. They had been married two years.

The probe had found that Sara was subjected to “physical torture and cruelty” by Aman Mani.

Madhumita Shukla was shot in Lucknow on April 9, 2003, with investigations showing she was pregnant at the time. She was in a relationship with Amar Mani Tripathi, then a minister in the BSP government.

Tripathi and his wife have spent a major part of their sentence under “treatment” for various ailments at BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur.

Shukla, who has a gunner for security provided by police, says she continues to face threats, but never misses a court date or fails to guard against preference to the Tripathis, using RTI as a tool for information. “I am fighting a powerful family. My personal life is ruined because of this,” she says.

Singh also has a police gunner, following threats she received. She fears that with the trial of the case on in a CBI court in Ghaziabad, Aman Mani and father Amar Mani could easily put pressure on witnesses. That’s her prime task, she adds: to ensure that witnesses “do not turn hostile”, and for that she regularly visits the CBI court.

While discouraged at Aman Mani getting a ticket, Shukla and Singh say they had no plans to campaign against him as of now. “It would not be safe for me to go to Nautanwa,” says Shukla.

She hopes a national party will step up to support her, adds Singh.