Convicted of daylight lynching of Krishnaiah, Anand Mohan’s premature release is a blow to the IAS officer’s family, to justice and a slap to civil servants

There can be nothing more heinous than the lynching of a public servant on duty, by a rowdy mob, in broad daylight, in a public place. That the public functionary was the District Magistrate, the highest executive of the district and that the leader of the mob was an elected political leader makes this case even more shocking and significant.

The killing of Indian Administrative Service officer Krishnaiah, then District Magistrate of Gopalganj in Bihar, on December 5, 1994, must rank as the equivalent of a Jallianwala Bagh tragedy in the annals of public administration because of its imperiousness, senselessness and brutality. That civil servants across the length and breadth of the country are anguished by the premature release from behind bars of Anand Mohan, the prime accused, is only natural.

This is not just a blow to justice and to the family of the officer, but a slap to the civil servants across the nation. It will cast a lasting and disheartening spell on the civil service—if allowed to pass, it will further demoralise civil servants forever. That Krishaniah was a Dalit from a poor social background, does not lend extra salience to this case, because a civil servant on duty is casteless, wedded only to the Constitution.

Civil servants make up the spinal cord that holds a governmental framework together, imparting interoperability and resilience to all other organs. Sardar Patel recognised the value of civil servants. While exhorting them to be impartial and fair in their approach, he also made it clear that governments should be able to keep civil servants happy and content so that they are in a position to give their best.

Woodrow Wilson, who is recognised in America as the father of public administration, spoke at length about the importance and sanctity of civil service.

And yet, we have a case of the main accused in the murder of the District Magistrate being released prematurely in contravention of law. There are many legal grounds that make the remission of the sentence unjustifiable.

The Supreme Court has held the view that for persons convicted of murder, life imprisonment is the rule and death sentence an exception, and a balance between aggravating and mitigating circumstances has to be drawn out. In the famous Macchi Singh case, of killings in Punjab, in 1983, the Supreme Court invoked the concept of “community” and put itself in the shoes of the community and spoke of “collective conscience,” when awarding the death sentence to the accused.

The Supreme Court has subsequently also looked at what would define the magnitude of the crime as being enormous. In the Swami Shraddhanand case of Karnataka, in 2006, it has enumerated one of these instances as “when the victim is a public figure generally loved and respected by the community for the services rendered by him and the murder is committed for political or similar reasons other than personal reasons.” It has also recognised that “the sentence of imprisonment shall last as long as life lasts, where there are exceptional indications of murderous recidivism and the community cannot run the risk of the convict being at large. This takes care of judicial apprehensions that unless physically liquidated the culprit may at some remote time repeat murder.”

Thus, the Supreme Court has drawn a distinction, based on the circumstances of the crime, the background of the accused and the nature of the victim, between imprisonment for life that should not be commuted and routine life imprisonment that is subject to remission. It has held that once subjected to permanent imprisonment for life, there should not be a case for remission. It has observed, “No other rule has been brought to our notice which confers an indefeasible right on a prisoner sentenced to transportation for life to an unconditional release on the expiry of a particular term including remissions. The rules under the Prisons Act do not substitute a lesser sentence for a sentence of transportation for life… a sentence for life would ensure till the lifetime of the accused as it is not possible to fix a particular period the prisoner’s death and remissions given under the Rules could not be regarded as a substitute for a sentence of transportation for life.”

In the present case, Anand Mohan was awarded a death sentence by the Sessions Court at the end of a 13-year trial. On appeal, the Patna High Court commuted that to ‘Rigorous Imprisonment for life.’ On his further appeal, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of “Rigorous Imprisonment for Life”. That gave the sentence finality. As elucidated in earlier judgments of the Supreme Court, imprisonment for life means full natural course of life and cannot be mechanically interpreted to be 14 years. This has been further reaffirmed in various judgments such as those of Constitutional benches in Maru Ram v. Union of India and Union of India v. Sriharan. Therefore, the grant of remission by the State of Bihar undertaken through its executive order of April 24, 2023 flies in the face of earlier rulings of the Supreme Court.

Even as per the Bihar Prison Manual, this order of remission is wrong. Rule 481(1)(c) of the Bihar Prison Manual, 2012, provides that convicts whose death sentence has been commuted to life sentence will be eligible for consideration of remission only after completion of 20 years of sentence. In this case, Anand Mohan was finally handed a Rigorous Imprisonment for Life that was confirmed by the Apex Court. Because Anand Mohan had served only 14 years of incarceration, he was not eligible to be considered for remission.

Besides, the policy of remission applicable at the time of conviction has to be considered for deciding the application of premature release as per the Supreme Court. In the present case, there was a notification that stated that there would be no remission for those Convicts who had been guilty of murder of civil servants on duty. Therefore, the Bihar government could not have overlooked the case and amended the Jail Manual with retrospective effect to cause the release of Anand Mohan. Besides being patently illegal such an order is sheer capitulation to criminal forces and thereby a public admission of compromised governance.

This order of the Bihar Government merits being challenged. It should be pointed out that it is based on extraneous political considerations and therefore deserves to be declared unreasonable, arbitrary, unfair, and struck down. A Government that lowers the morale of civil servants and vitiates the rule of law carves out its own perdition. As for civil servants like G Krishnaiah who lay down their lives while in office, one remembers the words of Tennyson, “When can their glory fade?”

(The author is a former Secretary to the Government of India)