Members of Parliament live in a different timeline compared to the common people. It’s BC or AC i.e. Before Crime or After Crime. The fun part is that irrespective of what crime an MP is accused of, is allowed to sit in the house, create chaos and even do television drama as per their whims and fancies. After they get bail, there is no regret, shame or learning that’s seen in their behaviour. Jails don’t scare the biggies anymore as they claim of having a protected world and fans inside for them where they even carry out the “prachaar” of their party. In a world where people are mourning and crying over a gangster’s death, there are very few fighting for the murder of an IAS officer. Logic and sensitivity have gone for a toss with the current scenario in our country. You need to know many issues that textbooks and media avoid to bring forward with passion.
“Saheb, stay inside. Driver Deepak Kumar yelled at Gopalganj District Magistrate G Krishnaiah, “Don’t go out,” and sped the ambassador car with registration number BHQ777 backwards. They were on NH-28 in the Muzaffarpur region of Bihar when a horde of 5,000 enraged people charged at their car. IAS officer, 36, told Kumar, “I said stop the car, wait for the bodyguard.” The mob was now advancing on the DM after dragging the bodyguard, TM Hembram, outside. The savage crowd pulled the IAS officer out of the van that fatal evening on December 5, 1994, grasping his collar. “He was thinking of having a dialogue with them and rescuing the bodyguard,” Kumar recalled. “They continued to strike my head, nose, and ears. I eventually ceased hearing any further sounds. When I regained consciousness, I hurried towards the car and discovered Saheb laying nearby in an overturned position. The area was covered in blood. He suffered many stone wounds to his face and bullet wounds to his head. The assassination of the DM shocked Bihar and all of India. The community of influential IAS officers had never felt so exposed. By that point, Krishnaiah, a member of the Dalit group, had established himself in Bihar. Case 216/1994 about his murder is active at Muzaffarpur’s Sadar police station. 36 defendants were jointly tried as a result of the four-page FIR. Anand Mohan Singh, the lone convicted gangster and former MP, is now free after the Nitish Kumar administration modified the prison regulations, 29 years after his conviction. The government modified the Prison Manual 2012 by issuing an order on April 10th, eliminating the clause stating that anyone charged with the “murder of a public servant while on duty” was ineligible for early release.
The crime site, the unremarkable Khabra village on the outskirts of Muzaffarpur city, has changed over the past three decades and is now a tiny town humming with commercial activity. In the location where Krishaniah’s body was found in a pool of blood, a three-story nursing facility presently stands. A sizable wedding venue with a lawn, a busy restaurant, and a brand-new housing development is on the opposite side. It looks like the town has moved on. But some memories have remained permanently imprinted. On a white pedestal, a bust of G Krishnaiah is displayed in the Gopalganj Collectorate. And now, with Nitish Kumar’s administration changing a remission rule to release Anand Mohan and even attending his son’s engagement ceremony, the old wounds have been touched once more. The pictures of the CM laughing with Anand Mohan’s family have gone viral online. Not just the eyewitnesses, but also Krishnaiah’s co-workers and IAS organisation members, have been incensed by it. The previously dormant resentment in the area has re-emerged, and some people have even brought up on social media how Nitish Kumar helped arrange Mohan’s release the same weekend that Atiq Ahmed was slain in police custody in Uttar Pradesh.
Kaushlendra, alias Chhotan Shukla, a member of the Bihar People’s Party (BPP), was shot and killed in 1994. His death served as the impetus for the assault on the IAS official, which was organised by Anand Mohan Singh, the man behind the BPP. Anand Mohan’s fans were pleading for his release at a public gathering in Patna on January 23, 2023, while yelling phrases like “Anand Mohan ko riha karo.” Since 2007, Mohan has been imprisoned in Saharsa serving a life sentence; nevertheless, several Rajput JD(U) lawmakers have been putting pressure on the Bihar government to free him sooner. People were promised by CM Kumar that he was working to secure his release as demands grew stronger. The release of 27 inmates was announced by the Bihar government on April 24th, three months later. Anand Mohan was the eleventh name on the list. The bureaucracy’s rank and file experienced shockwaves of wrath, anger, and betrayal. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) criticised the altered prison regulations as being “anti-Dalit”. On Sunday, Mayawati urged Nitish Kumar to rethink his choice and expressed concern that it would infuriate Dalits all over India. The BJP was not slow to attack its erstwhile ally. The head of the BJP IT Cell tweeted, “Shame on Nitish Kumar for capitulating to RJD’s sinister machinations.”
There is resentment among certain IAS employees about how quickly all the investigations and court cases have been dismissed and reversed for political reasons. Retired IAS officers and associates of Krishnaiah are calling it “shameful, outrageous, and unacceptable” in WhatsApp groups. Others have demanded that joint petitions be submitted in various courts. “I well recall the episode. Indignantly writing in one of the WhatsApp groups, a retired IAS officer stated, “It was a shame on Bihar then, as it is a shame on Bihar now. Many retired bureaucrats kept a close eye on the trial. 25 witnesses in total were deposed in court, 11 of whom were police officers. Deepak Kumar, a driver, Hembram, a bodyguard who escaped the mob attack, and PL Tangri, a photographer who was also present. Deepak’s responsibility as the second driver was to transport the collector to out-of-town meetings. Deepak has driven 35 DMs on out-of-town visits since Krishnaiah’s passing. He always ensures that they go home without incident. And each time he travels, he reflects on what took on that evening in 1994. He said, “Perhaps I shouldn’t have listened to Saheb that day.”
Seven defendants were found guilty while the other 29 were cleared in 2007, following a 13-year trial. Anand Mohan, Professor Arun Kumar, and Akhlaque Ahmad were among those sentenced to death. Lovely Anand, Mohan’s wife, and others received a life sentence and a fine of Rs 25,000. The Patna High Court modified Mohan’s death sentence to life in prison a year later, stating that the case did not qualify as one of the “rarest of the rare” to warrant a death sentence. Although the deceased was a district magistrate, the court’s decision stated that he was slain in another district while a passenger in a car unintentionally incurred the fury of a mob. The lower court’s decision was reversed, and the remaining six people who had been found guilty were exonerated.
In 2012, Anand Mohan appealed the Supreme Court’s upholding of the life sentence after the Patna High Court ruling was upheld. His current sentence in Saharsa Prison runs till April 25, 2023. Krishnaiah was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father was a lineman, and he was born into a Dalit family. He is remembered as a self-made guy and someone who commanded respect among his peers. Several keys, a blood-stained watch, a shattered pair of gold eyeglasses, and a tiffin box were discovered next to the car where Krishnaiah was killed. The tiffin box triggers bittersweet recollections. Abhayanand, a retired IPS officer who worked with Krishnaiah as a Superintendent of Police when the latter was a collector in Bettiah, recalls how they used to avoid eating in the homes of powerful people to prevent potential conflicts of interest. Krishnaiah’s lunchbox was a story in itself. Shri Ram, one of the drivers at the collectorate, says that he always took it with him. Though he never drove Krishnaiah, he is familiar with the tales. As soon as you eat at someone’s home, DM Saheb would say, you are subject to their social influence. But as a collector, he belonged to everyone. His family couldn’t afford to feed him, so Krishnaiah was put at a community hostel during his time living in Andhra, according to Abhayanand. Abhayanand continued, “Whenever he would cross a canal in Bihar, he would recall swimming across canals back home in Andhra to go to the dormitory.”
Krishnaiah was born in Byrapuram, a tiny village in Andhra Pradesh’s Kurnool district, and grew up in abject poverty. But he recognised the need for education and began working odd jobs to help cover his expenses. After earning his postgraduate degree in English literature from Osmania University in Hyderabad, he passed the UPSC test in 1985. “We all had our groups throughout the LBSNAA training days. So, at first, we were just “hi, hello, friends.” But when the Bihar cadre was assigned to the three of us (Krishnaiah, J Rama Krishna, and A Vidyasagar), we sort of grew closer, according to A Vidyasagar, who retired in 2016. Krishnaiah was quiet and unassuming, according to his acquaintances. Krishnaiah was originally uneasy about his deployment to Bihar, claims Vidyasagar. But when we eventually joined the cadre, we learned that our concern was unwarranted. Krishnaiah was sent to the Nalanda district as an assistant collector following his training. From there, he was dispatched to Gopalganj as DM, Bettiah as DM, and Hazaribagh as SDM. His two girls were seven and five years old at the time of his passing. Krishnaiah’s wife T Uma Devi admitted that parenting her two girls by herself was “traumatic.”
Sanjeev Chopra, a retired IAS official from the same batch, recalled that it took some time for his friends to learn of his passing. Mobile phones were not present. It took some time for the news to spread throughout the entire nation. We learned about the tragedy much earlier than others because I was in the [West] Bengal cadre, the man stated. In 1996–1997, when Chopra was appointed deputy director of the LBSNAA (Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration), he launched two awards for aspiring IAS officers in honour of G Krishnaiah and Dr LV Reddy (the 24th Deputy Commissioner of Kohima, Nagaland, who was also killed by gunfire). The best law and order essay is honoured with the Krishnaiah Memorial Award. 70 of his former classmates have consented to sign a petition asking for justice for Uma Devi’s husband. Two busts have been erected in the Gopalganj Collectorate. One is of Mahesh PD Narayana Sharma, who held the position of DM between February 1982 and April 1983. He perished in a bombing that occurred on the Collectorate stairs. According to reports, Sant Gyaneshwar, a 31-year-old self-described godman, and six other people set it off.
The other monument depicts G Krishnaiah holding a pen in his shirt pocket. Every year on Independence and Republic Days, the currently employed DM honours the two collectors who died while performing their duties. On their birthdays and the anniversaries of their deaths, the Collectorate also honours the past DMs. “You’ll get the third statue,” she said. It’s the most typical threat that Gopalganj DMs frequently encounter. Early in the 1990s, G Krishnaiah served as Gopalganj’s 16th DM. His employees, including Peshkar, bada bau, and the drivers, attest to his modesty. “He (Krishnaiah) was known to stop his Ambassador whenever he spotted a poor man approaching him,” remarked Manoj. Deepak, a different employee, reported how Krishnaiah would frequently chastise them for working over hours. One of his staffers, Keshav Prasad, accompanied his body as it was taken to his hometown. He was able to comprehend Krishnaiah’s intense emotions thanks to what he observed there. Despite Prasad’s passing, stories about the DM’s village are still told in the Collectorate. Being impoverished himself, he had compassion for those in need. “Once, a destitute woman approached him and sobbed and shared her plight. Dinesh Singh, a former bada babu or top clerk who retired from the Collectorate, claimed to have seen tears streaming from the collector’s eyes. Singh served as Krihnaiah’s bench clerk. He would frequently inquire about visitors, which was a distinctive quality about him. He would inquire, “Bada babu, is anyone waiting?” Dinesh continued.
Do you think MPs who are accused of crimes should be allowed to be in the house? Do you think they should be given salaries from the taxpayers’ fund? Do you think they should be allowed to be lawmakers? Do you think Members of Parliament should not have tenure “ After Crime ?” Do you think laws should be changed to give relief to MPs in jail? Do you think Nitish Kumar is good for his state? Send us your view on editor@tngtimes.com
