By IANS
Patna : Former Bihar MP and Janata Dal-United (JD-U) leader Anand Mohan Singh, sentenced to death for the murder of a district magistrate in 1994, has again gone on a hunger strike demanding better facilities in jail.
Anand Mohan Singh has been on hunger strike inside the high-security Bhagalpur jail since Wednesday, a jail official said Thursday. Last month he was on hunger strike in the jail for the same reason and had to be hospitalised after 20 days.
The former MP has been joined by 31 prisoners, including former minister Akhlaque Ahmad and former legislator Arun Kumar, both sentenced to death for the same crime – the 1994 murder of Gopalganj District Magistrate G. Krishnaiah.
“They refused food served to them Wednesday and started the hunger strike demanding better facilities,” a jail official said.
Jail authorities made it clear that as per the jail manual, a prisoner on death row has to sleep on the ground with only two blankets and has to be provided simple food. “We cannot go against the jail manual,” an official said.
Singh’s wife Lovely Anand, a former MP herself who was served a life sentence for the same crime and later granted bail by the Patna High Court, alleged that her husband was tortured in jail and given inhuman treatment.
Jail officials in Bhagalpur, about 180 km from here, said Singh first went on hunger strike Nov 4 soon after he was shifted from Patna’s Beur jail to Bhagalpur jail. He ended the strike only after his mother Geeta Devi requested him to when his condition deteriorated and he was shifted to hospital on Nov 24.
Singh, founder of the Bihar People’s Party (BPP) who later joined Bihar’s ruling JD-U, as well as Akhlaq Ahmad and Arun Kumar, formerly with BPP, were in October sentenced to death by Patna Additional District and Sessions Judge Ramshreshta Rai for the murder of Krishnaiah on Dec 5, 1994.
The court gave life imprisonments to four politicians, including Lovely Anand, Munna Shukla, a JD-U legislator from Lalganj, Shashi Shekhar Thakur and Harendra Kumar who lost the last Lok Sabha election as a JD-U candidate. All of them were granted bail by the high court.
Krishnaiah, a 1985 batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, was shot at and then stoned to death by a mob near Khaabra village on National Highway 28 when he was returning to Gopalganj from Hajipur via Muzaffarpur after attending an official meeting.
Singh was arrested and jailed for the murder. But he contested the 1996 parliamentary election from prison and won. He then secured bail to attend parliament. He was re-elected in 1998, but lost the 1999 election.
Singh and Shukla are facing several criminal cases, including relating 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 in north Bihar.