Patna, Oct 4 :No food was cooked in a Bihar village Wednesday night in a spontaneous show of solidarity to Munna Shukla, Janata Dal-United (JD-U) legislator from Lalganj, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the case of the brutal lynching of an IAS officer in 1994.

"The entire village skipped food to express solidarity with Munna Shukla, who is our hero," Ramdeo Singh, one of the villagers in Khanjaha Chak, the native village of Munna Shukla in Vaishali district, said Thursday.

"Irrespective of caste or creed, the entire village collectively resolved not to eat or sleep Wednesday night," Ram Suresh Shukla, uncle of Munna Shukla, said.

Former lok sabha MP and JD-U leader Anand Mohan Singh, who was sentenced to death along with two other politicians, is considered a messiah in Saharsa district's Panchchgachia region, where he has a Robinhood image.

The villagers feel Shukla and Anand Mohan Singh will be proved innocent.

Munna Shukla along with three others - former Lok Sabha MP Lovely Anand, a JD-U leader and wife of Anand Mohan Singh, and Shashi Shekhar Thakur and Harendra Kumar, who lost the last Lok Sabha election as a JD-U candidate - were sentenced to life imprisonment Wednesday.

A Patna court pronounced the much-awaited verdict thirteen years after a mob led by the husband-wife duo of Anand Mohan and Lovely shot at and then stoned to death G. Krishnaiya, the Gopalganj district magistrate, on a national highway near Muzaffarpur town.

Additional district and sessions judge Ramshreshta Rai awarded death sentence to Anand Mohan Singh, as well as former Bihar minister Akhlaq Ahmad, now a leader of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), and Arun Kumar, formerly with the Bihar People's Party.

The court found Anand Mohan Singh and the others guilty under sections 302, 307, 147, and 427 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

All the seven politicians were taken into custody and sent to Beur jail.

The court judgement made it clear that incitement, instigation and exhortation by them led to the lynching of Krishnaiya.

"It is established from evidence that accused persons Anand Mohan, Lovely Anand, Arun Kumar and Akhlaque Ahmad made fiery speeches and thereby incited, exhorted and goaded the members of the mob to kill the deceased collector," the court judgment said.

Krishnaiya, a 1985 batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, was shot at and then stoned by a mob near Khaabra village on national highway 28 on December 5, 1994 when he was returning to Gopalganj from Hajipur via Muzaffarpur after attending an official meeting.

The police said Krishnaiya's vehicle was intercepted by a mob led by Anand Mohan Singh, then chief of Bihar People's Party (BPP). His wife Lovely Anand, Munna Shukla and Akhlaq Ahmad were also part of the mob, which comprised mainly armed henchmen and supporters of Anand Mohan Singh.

The mob was protesting the killing of former BPP leader Kaushalendra Shukla alias Chhotan Shukla.

Krishnaiya, whose predecessor had also been killed in a bomb attack, was first shot. The officer began to bleed, but did not die. The former MP's supporters then dragged him out of the vehicle and mercilessly stoned him to death.

Singh and Munna Shukla are facing several criminal cases, including those related to murder, attempt to murder, extortion and abduction in various courts.

Singh's name spelt terror in the Saharsa-Supaul belt, while Shukla is feared in the Vaishali-Muzaffarpur belt of north Bihar.

Singh formed the Krantikari Samajwadi Sena in 1980 but lost the Lok Sabha election that year. He became a Janata Dal legislator in 1990.

The next year, he was accused of killing an independent candidate from Madhepura. He formed the BPP in 1993, but failed to win from any of the three Assembly seats he contested in 1995.

Singh entered the Lok Sabha in 1996 from Sheohar. He won the seat again in 1998 but lost to Anwarul Haque in 1999.

(IANS)

Comment

Comments...

This is very sad to hear the response from Munna Shukla villagers, We all the aware of this bad name. I fail to understand what kind of solidarity is this, Was Munna Shukla, Veer Bhagat Singh, Or Khuddi Ram Bose. I think this is poor fate of Bihar and also the reason for the criminals becoming the Messihah of a limited world, country, State, village. This is a big appeal from the people of Bihar that if you will keep on supporting people of the bad identity, you and your coming generation, your children will be cursed by your supported people only. "Bad is always Bad". Humanity & mankind is the basic property of people of the Universe. A criminal who could be good for an individual, a mass, a specific community, a specific village, that too for a very limited time. We all have been experiencing criminals collecting funds from his family members, from his neighborhood, from his villagers in the name of protection and other supports. Are we so helpless that we have handed over our fate to those criminals who can never be good to his family members How could one be good to his village or his nation. A Bad identity man cannot be a Hero.

So I again and again appeal from the people of Bihar that " Never support a bad identity man, may this a bad man is your own son or so called the son of the soil. It is the same as a single rotten fish pollutes the entire pond, a single bad man from your family, from your village, from your district, from your state and from your country will always be the reason for the shame of the entire humanity.

Pl Beware ! Otherwise fate of People of Bihar will lost their identity, their glory.

Government is putting all the efforts in changing the entire system. Please help the Government not for you, but for your future Children, who could feel to be Proud Bihari.

Dhirendra Pandit

dhirendrapandit@gmail.com

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First of all this article does not qualify to be called news. What kind of news is this? It is in our social culture. Even if a henious criminal or a person who is a big PAPI dies, people start talking in sympathetic language. Munna Shukla is a gangster and curse to the society. Any ordinary person of Bihar knows that he is involve in several cases of murder and extortions. And I don't believe that Munna Shukla and Anand Mohan are Robin Hood. Robin Hood never killed innocent people. These two idividuals are dreaded criminal nothing else. What was the crime of Krishnaiah? Why he was killed in cold blood?
The people of Bihar needs to mature, if they wish to see better future for their children. Criminals have no caste. Please raise yourself above the caste and creed feeling. In my opinion if Bihar administration can do away with 50 big level criminals, the society will benefit a lot. My list goes as follows:
1. Md. Shahabuddin
2. Suraj Bhan Singh
3. Prabhu Nath Singh
4. Munna Shukla
4. Anand Mohan
5. Rama Singh
6. Dhumal Singh
7. Naga Singh
8. Sadhu Yadav
9. Subhash Yadav
10. Rajan Tewari

And other criminals who are habbitual offender and do organised crime.

At last the juidiciary is waking up. Congratulations to juidiciary for delivering justice. If this momentum is maintained the common man can start having faith in the system.

Mithilesh Singh
Germany
mksingh@alcatel-lucent.com