Former Samajwadi Party leader Amarmani Tripathi, serving life term along with his wife Madhumani in the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla has moved a mercy petition before governor B l Joshi on Wednesday.
He sought relief in the punishment on grounds of his and his wife’s illness. However Nidhi Shukla,sister of the slain poetess has also met the governor at Rajbhawan and opposed the application of the convicted couple. Reports said that in the mercy petition, former minister Amarmani and his wife Madhumani claimed that they were very ill and they are not getting treatment. They also claimed that their both children have grown up and they are facing difficulty in their marriage.
The petition is said to have been sent to the governor last week seeking to waive off their remaining punishment. Nidhi Shukla, who met the governor claimed that she has placed all the facts before the governor and claimed that even review petitions of the convicted couple has been rejected by the Supreme Court twice.’’When the SC has not entertained the couple then how could they move a mercy petition before the governor,’’ she said. Nidhi also submitted an application to the Governor alleging that Amarmani is a noted criminal and grade A history-sheeter of Gorakhpur and there are around 33 cases pending against him. ‘’ CBI has presented all the evidences against the couple and all are proved in all the courts after which they were convicted with life term,’’ she said.
Amarmani and Madhumani, are presently staying at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College at Gorakhpur in police custody and were receiving treatment. Amarmani is very close to the ruling Samajwadi Party in the State and even his son contested the last assembly elections on the party ticket but lost. Undergoing a life term, Amarmani Tripathi and his wife Madhumani were convicted for the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla after she refused to abort her pregnancy caused by him. The Post-Mortem report of Madhumita revealed that she was carrying a foetus that matched the DNA of Amarmani, and he and his wife Madhumani were sentenced to life imprisonment in October 2007.
Amarmani had been a member of the Indian National Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party, and the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was Minister of State for Institutional Finance in the Rajnath Singh-led BJP government in 2001, but was dismissed in December that year, after the kidnappers of Rahul Madesia, the 15-year-old son of a businessman in Basti in eastern Uttar Pradesh, told the police that Amarmani had provided them the bungalow in lucknow from where they were arrested. On May 9, 2003, Madhumita Shukla, a 24-year old budding poetess and allegedly the lover of Amarmani, was gunned down at close range by two visitors in her two-room apartment in lucknow’s Paper Mill Colony. She was seven months pregnant at the time .
The case was subsequently transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI), and Amarmani was arrested in September 2003. Phone calls relating to the murder were traced to Tripathi’s wife Madhumani in Gorakhpur ,who was also subsequently convicted for the murder. In March 2007, the case was transferred to a special court in Dehradun, where Tripathi and his wife along with three others were convicted for the murder of Madhumita Shukla murder on October 24, 2007. The court has sentenced Amarmani, his wife Madhumani and two other accused to life imprisonment. In 2012, Amarmani’s son Amanmani Tripathi was given a ticket by Samajwadi Party for contesting in the Assembly elections, 2012. But Amanmani lost the elections even after the SP wave.