CPI(ML), Families of Bihar TADA Convicts Demand Their Release

Patna: Families of TADA prisoners and 12 CPI(ML) MLAs, party leaders and workers protested in Patna on Friday demanding their release after the Bihar government freed gangster-turned-politician Anand Mohan Singh, a Rajput leader serving a life sentence since 2007 for the murder of Gopalganj district magistrate G Krishnaiah in Muzaffarpur on December 5, 1994.

The Nitish Kumar government had issued a notification for releasing 27 prisoners, including former MP Singh, after removing a clause in the 2012 Bihar Prison Manual that forbade the remission of jail term for people convicted of murdering a public servant on duty.

The protesting family members said that the TADA prisoners, languishing in jail for 22 years, are old with most of them sick, but the government has not released them. They asked the chief minister why have the inmates not got justice.

If the 27 prisoners, who completed 14-plus years, were released, why were the party’s six poor supporters from Arwal—Jagdish Yadav, Churaman Bhagat, Arvind Chaudhary, Ajit Sau, Laxman Sau and Shyam Chaudhary—in jail for more than 22 years left out, the protesters asked.

The prisoners are the surviving members of the 14 CPI (ML) supporters convicted under TADA in 2003. “All of them belong to OBC and Dalit communities. The families have appealed to Kumar to do justice to them,” CPI (ML) MLA Mahboob Alam told Newsclick.

“My husband Jagdish Yadav, who is 70, was framed under TADA. We were badly hit due to his incarceration. Now, he wants to spend his remaining years with his family. But the government has disappointed us,” Yadav’s wife Pushpa Devi, one of the protesters, told Newsclick.

Other protesters included Choudhary’s wife Phulna Devi; Ramrati Devi, wife of another TADA prisoner Baleshwar Choudhary; Koshmi Devi, daughter-in-law of Manhgu Choudhary; and Jamila Khatoon, wife of Shah Chand.

Arwal CPI(ML) MLA Arwal Mahanand Singh said, “All the TADA convicts have completed 22 years in jail. They were wrongly made accused in the Bhadasi case and sent to jail. Of the six TADA prisoners, three are in hospital due to age-related illness and others are also weak. The government should consider the demand of their families to release them.”

Hours after Singh was freed, a PIL was filed in the Patna High Court against his release and several people, including Krishnaiah’s wife and daughter, criticised the decision.

Kumar’s ally CPI(ML) had termed the decision to release the 27 convicts a “selective release of prisoners”. According to the party, only one of the 14 members, Tribhuvan Sharma, was released by the High Court in 2020.