SC upholds life term for Anand Mohan for DM's murder

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld life sentence to former MP Anand Mohan, finding the evidence sufficient to hold him guilty for exhorting slain gangster Chutan Shukla’s brother Bhutkan Shukla to shoot Gopalganj district magistrate G Krishnaiah in 1994.
The incident happened in full public view in Muzzaffarpur, where Mohan was seen inciting people to take revenge for the gangster’s killing.The mob fury found a target in the DM’s car and Krishnaiah was beaten up after being pulled out of the vehicle. When he was lying injured, Mohan exhorted Shukla who drew his revolver and shot the officer dead on December 5, 1994.
A Patna trial court had found Mohan, his wife Lovely Anand, Prof Arun Kumar Singh, Akhlak Ahmad, Munna Shukla, Harendra Kumar and Shashi Shekhar Pandey guilty of murder and conspiracy. It sentenced Mohan, Prof Singh and Ahmad to death while giving life term to Lovely and other accused.
The Patna High Court said the police had not been able to establish unlawful assembly to be able to prove charges against the accused persons except the murder charge against Mohan. It acquitted all other accused while commuting the sentence of Mohan from death penalty to life imprisonment.
Rejecting Mohan’s appeal as well as the state’s appeal seeking enhancement of sentence to death, an apex court bench of Justices A K Patnaik and Swatanter Kumar said the prosecution had been able to prove that the district magistrate was shot by Bhutkan on the exhortations of Mohan.
The apex court agreed with the HC that though the deceased was a district magistrate, he was killed in another district as an occupant of a car by chance on account of mob fury and exhortation by Mohan and firing by Bhutkan Shukla. As Mohan was not the assailant himself, rigorous imprisonment for life would be the appropriate sentence, the HC had said.
Justice Patnaik, writing the judgment for the bench, said, “We agree with this view of the HC and we are of the view that this was not one of those rarest of rare cases where the HC should have confirmed the death sentence on Mohan. In our considered view, Mohan is liable for rigorous imprisonment for life.”