New Delhi: It was an outrageous murder of an IIM graduate at a petrol pump in Lakhimpur Kheri almost two decades ago. He was punished with six gunshots all over his body for speaking the truth about the corruption at the Indian Oil Corporation. Shanmugam Manjunath’s shocking killing stayed in the headlines for months and triggered a national campaign for the protection of whistleblowers. But in the release of 691 convicts by the Yogi Adityanath government, including the infamous Bahubali Amarmani Tripathi, the fight for accountability has received a blow.
Among the 691 is Shivkesh ‘Lalla’ Giri, one of the six men convicted of Majunath’s murder. He was released earlier this year by the Uttar Pradesh government based on his good conduct after spending 16 years in the Lakhimpur Kheri district jail.
“With this government, these kinds of things are expected,” Kamini Jaiswal, the lawyer for the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust, told ThePrint. The Trust sent a letter to UP CM Yogi Adityanath, the state’s Governor and the principal secretary requesting that the others in the case should not be released. “The release of the convicts in the Bilkis Bano case has set a precedent that is hard to combat.”
The national outrage over Manjunath’s murder culminated in 2011 when the Manmohan Singh government passed the ambitious Whistleblowers Protection Act.
Manjunath was his school’s volleyball captain, a singer-par-excellence and his brother’s fiercest protector. Raised in Kolar Gold Fields, a mining region 100 kilometres from Bangalore, Manjunath secured a degree in Computer Science Engineering from Mysore before moving up North — he received an MBA from IIM Lucknow and became a sales officer at Indian Oil Corporation, the country’s most recognisable oil and gas enterprise.
This was 20 years ago. After having worked for just about two years, Manjunath was killed in Gola Gokalnnath — a town in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri, then known mainly for its Shiva Temple and sugar mills. He was found in the backseat of a car, kilometres away from the crime scene, driven by employees of Monu Mittal, whose father’s petrol pump had come under Manjunath’s scanner for selling spurious oil.
Prior to 2022, there were seven days when convicts with life terms were released. Last year, Teachers’ Day, International Day for Tolerance and National Human Rights Day were added into the mix — the handful of days on which convicts were released is growing.
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Classmates banded together
Manjunath had booked a hotel room in Gola Gokalnnath for the night and went to investigate the petrol pump run by Mittal the next day. He purportedly told Mittal that he’d be filing his inspection report, exposing the Mittals’ adulteration of fuel. This was not their first interaction. The petrol pump had been previously sealed for a month, opened only after Mittal was forced to shell out a Rs 70,000 fine.
Aided and abetted by a motley crew of employees and friends, Mittal shot Manjunath at least six times, killing the 27-year-old within the confines of the petrol pump. In 2007, all eight accused were found guilty by the Lakhimpur Kheri Sessions Court. The convicts challenged the conviction in the Allahabad High Court. It commuted Mittal’s death sentence to life in 2009 and acquitted two of the accused.
10 years later, in 2015, the Supreme Court upheld the life sentences of the six convicted — Monu Mittal, Devesh Agnihotri, Shivkesh ‘Lalla’ Giri, Rajesh Varma, Vivek Sharma and Rakesh Kumar Anand. They were held guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (destruction of evidence) of the IPC and provisions of the Arms Act.
Journalists swarmed the trial — first in the Lakhimpur Kheri district court, then in the Allahabad High Court, and finally in the Supreme Court. IIM alumni banded together, leading to the formation of the Manjunath Shanmugam Trust, which fought the case.
“It was horrific. He was sincere, honest, and doing his job. We felt it was important to get justice for Manjunath. This was the time of the Jessica Lal case, when a retrial was needed — fuelled by public outrage,” said Anjali Mullatti, who founded the trust alongside H Jaishankar, an IIMB alumnus. They didn’t know him personally, he was 10 years Anjali’s junior. While the onus was on IOCL—an IOCL dealer was accused of murdering an IOCL employee for IOCL oil adulteration. “But they weren’t doing much.”
Sushant Pote was an IIML student at the time of the murder. A volunteer during the trial, he became the third trustee.
Volunteer groups came into existence, witnesses turned hostile, media houses came on board, and the IIM community rallied together. “The people who really participated were the students. They kept it going. It wasn’t possible for the parents,” said Jaiswal.
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After the media circus
The proposal for Vivek Sharma’s premature release has also been sent to the government but remains pending. The media circus is long over, and Manjunath’s family has made every attempt to move on.
His father, now 75, has retired and his younger brother Raghavendra works in an MNC in Bangalore. Raghavendra insists on stability. “My parents were looking at me, and I knew it was time to take responsibility. I made my life routine,” he says. The IOCL offered him a job, but he refused. Manjunath, he recalled, would help him financially even before he moved to Mysore. “He was an inspiration. I even began playing volleyball because of him.”
His brother had insulated him from the world. In the neighbourhood, whenever he’d get into a fight — Manjunath would sort it out. He wanted to go to the same engineering college as him, but Manjunath told him it was time to stand on his own two feet. He facilitated his admission to a college in Rourkela, and through his “contacts”, ensured his brother had a ready set of friends waiting. “He was always there protecting me,” he says.
Anjali and Raghavendra both recall the overwhelming role played by the public in the aftermath. “Many people helped us. They came forward. They supported us. Society is good. They take care of us,” he says. 18 years after the death of his brother, he is now a father to two children — a six-year-old and an eight-year-old.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)