By IANS
Patna : The wife of former Bihar minister Akhlaq Ahmad, who was sentenced to death for the 1994 lynching of an IAS officer, has alleged that jail authorities here prevented him from offering prayers and they did not allow him to break the fast he is observing during Ramadan.
Ahmad, a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader, was one of the three politicians — including former MP and Janata Dal-United (JD-U) leader Anand Mohan Singh — who were sentenced to death for the lynching of G. Krishnaiya, the Gopalganj district magistrate, by a Patna court Wednesday.
The court also sentenced Singh’s wife Lovely Anand along with Munna Shukla, a JD-U legislator from Lalganj, to life imprisonment for the same crime.
All of them are currently lodged in the high security Beur jail in Patna.
“Akhlaq saheb is a Haji (a Muslim who has performed the Haj). But he was not allowed to offer namaz (prayer) last Friday by the jail authorities,” Shagufta Ahmad, Akhlaq Ahmad’s wife, told IANS.
She was upset and angry over the treatment meted out to her husband in jail. Shagufta claimed that he was not even allowed to break his fast. “It is a violation of human rights,” she said Saturday.
Ahmad’s wife said she is worried that the jail authorities may not allow him to offer prayers on Eid as well.
When the verdict was pronounced on Oct 3, the RJD leader appealed to the court to enable him to lead a religious life till he was hanged. But the court is yet to issue any such directive, jail sources said.
Krishnaiya, a 1985 batch IAS officer of Bihar cadre, was lynched by a mob near Khaabra village on National Highway 28 on Dec 5, 1994 when he was returning to Gopalganj from Hajipur via Muzaffarpur after attending an official meeting.
Police said Krishnaiya’s vehicle was intercepted by a mob led by Singh, then chief of Bihar People’s Party. His wife Lovely Anand, Munna Shukla and Akhlaq Ahmad were also part of the mob, which mainly comprised of armed henchmen and supporters of Singh.