Lucknow/Lakhimpur Kheri: On 9 May 2003, two men rang the doorbell of a house in Lucknow’s Paper Mill Colony, the residence of poetess Madhumita Shukla, who was then seven months pregnant.
Madhumita emerged and exclaimed “Bhaiya aap (brother, you)!” — and sent her minor domestic help Desraj to prepare tea.
The next thing Desraj heard was a gunshot, said Nidhi, talking about her pregnant sister’s murder.
“Desraj heard the gunshot but found himself bolted inside the kitchen. They had throttled Madhumita to ensure that she did not scream,” said Nidhi, who was among the first few people to reach the crime spot.
“They shot her in the breast — the most sensitive part of a woman’s body.”
Thus ended the life of Madhumita Shukla — a young woman described by those who knew her as “intelligent, talented and an ‘ashu kavitri (poetess)’”, one who didn’t use notes to recite her poems of ‘veer rasa (courage)’, through which she took on politicians and addressed social issues.
On her way to becoming a literary star, Madhumita had met a bahubali politician of Uttar Pradesh (UP) who changed the course of her life.
“She got trapped by Amarmani (Tripathi),” said Nidhi, referring to the former UP minister convicted of conspiring to murder Madhumita, who was pregnant with his child at the time. The two men who had shot at Madhumita were also convicted along with Amarmani’s relative Rohit Chaturvedi, who hired them.
Amarmani, a powerful politician with links to the Communist Party of India (CPI), Bahujan Samaj Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Samajwadi Party as well as the Congress, was last month released from judicial custody, along with his wife and fellow convict Madhumani, as part of the Yogi Adityanath government’s remission policy for lifers.
Nidhi alleges that the couple spent over 60 percent of their 16-year prison term in Gorakhpur’s BRD medical college. The couple remains in the medical college despite the remission of their sentence.
Madhumita’s failure to terminate her pregnancy despite continuous pressure from the married Amarmani had become the reason why he and his wife conspired to eliminate her, the CBI probe in the case had concluded.
Days after her death, a 35-page diary purportedly belonging to Madhumita was recovered from her house by the police and handed over to the CBI. Its excerpts were subsequently reported in the media.
A senior police officer privy to initial investigations confirmed to ThePrint that excerpts published in the media were indeed from the 35-page diary.
The entries revealed details about Madhumita’s affair with Amarmani and his wife’s insecurities about him.
Speaking to ThePrint, Additional Director General of Police (UP Special Task Force) Amitabh Yash who was the SP (CB-CID) at the time, said the murder was one of the most sensational criminal incidents to have taken place.
The media, he added, reported on updates in the probe for over a month, leading to top echelons of both the central and state governments taking note of it.
Retired police officer Rajesh Pandey, who was serving as the Superintendent of Police (crime) in UP at the time of Madhumita’s murder, said the diary had served as the main evidence to prove Amarmani’s involvement in the killing, along with the DNA report of the foetus.
Pandey made video memoirs of the case, which are part of his show Kissagoi.
Another senior police officer privy to the investigation told ThePrint, “She was in love with Amarmani but he was only using her. She also depended on him because of the assistance he gave her family initially.”
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An affair gone wrong
Madhumita, a known face in UP literary circles, was a regular at kavi sammelans (poet meets) held in the state and met Amarmani at one such event, her sister told ThePrint.
Ravi Pratap Singh, a septuagenarian Congressman from UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri who first introduced Madhumita to the world of kavi sammelans, described her as “very intelligent and talented”. “Had she been alive and studied, she would have made a name for herself,” he said.
“I had met her along with her father, who was an employee of the forest department and a union leader. He told us his daughter was a very good orator,” he added. “We asked her to recite a poem at a kavi sammelan held in Lakhimpur Kheri. When people showered praise and rewarded her, she was thrilled.”
Others who knew Madhumita referred to her as “upfront, vivacious and having a captivating persona”.
As Madhumita’s involvement in kavi sammelans increased, she moved to Lucknow. However, the family got a jolt when her father died in 1996 following a brain haemorrhage, said Nidhi.
Amarmani, then a popular Brahmin muscleman of eastern UP and a protégé-turned-foe of Hari Shankar Tiwari — believed to be the first gangster-politician to have won an election from jail — met Madhumita at a kavi sammelan in Delhi, recounted Nidhi. Some reports say they first met in 1999.
Amarmani, who is now in his 60s, was more than double Madhumita’s age when he first met her, was married and had three kids.
“His mother Savitri and his daughters would come to listen to Madhumita’s poetry at kavi sammelans and they invited her home,” she added.
“Amarmani ne Madhumita ko dekha aur uska imaan bigad gya (Amarmani saw Madhumita and developed bad intentions towards her). He trapped her slowly by coming closer to her and would ask us to write his speeches,” she said.
The close relationship between Amarmani and Madhumita is believed to have soon turned into an affair.
While Amarmani kept it under wraps for a long time, the affair was discovered by Amarmani’s wife after he purchased the Paper Mill Colony house for Madhumita, the CBI said in its case diary, notes Pandey in his video memoirs.
ThePrint has accessed a September 2005 order of a double bench of the Allahabad High Court that overturned the decision of a single bench granting bail to the couple. The order mentions the CBI findings, which included that “Amarmani wanted to get rid of Madhumita and had found other interests”.
‘He has relationships with many girls’
Madhumita’s purported diary refers to Amarmani as “Victor” and his wife Madhumani as “M”.
Many of the entries reveal the sequence of events prior to her death. One such entry dated 6 November, with no mention of the year, talks about Madhumita’s proximity with Amarmani.
“After brushing with the same brush, I felt that no one in the world could be as close as we are. Now I feel that all the distance between us has vanished. He has married M but he is closer to me than anyone else,” she wrote.
“M says that he has such relationships with many girls and after a year, when he is satiated, he leaves them. But M does not know that they get into the relationship for money but do not love him like I do. I believe he is my life,” she added.
Other entries mention further details about Madhumita’s relationship with Amarmani, the warnings she had received from his wife, and how he helped her (Madhumita’s) brother get a job.
In one entry dated 1 April, she wrote: “He lied to me. Why this closeness with M and distance from me? What have I done wrong? The whole day I withstood his hatred and when I could not tolerate it anymore, I cried. In the future, I will not love anyone as far as possible.”
Madhumita also wrote that Amarmani was afraid of his wife, and referred to her as her “saut (another wife of one’s husband)” in some entries.
She further stated that Amarmani would make sarcastic comments and shout at her, and that he had assaulted her when she danced with another man at an event in Delhi.
“I insisted and he agreed to go to Greater Kailash with me. Initially, he told me to dance with the boys. I was hesitant and declined. But during dinner, I started dancing with one boy. He was angered by this and slapped me. I felt Victor had become distant. He asked me not to go with him to his place. I tried to pacify him the whole night,” she wrote.
‘Treated as commodity’
Apart from the diary, the police recovered a five-page letter from Madhumita’s house, undated and addressed to Amarmani, which reportedly mentioned that she had terminated two pregnancies before.
In the letter, Madhumita purportedly wrote that not only she, but her entire family had started considering Amarmani their “guardian” after he helped her elder brother get a job.
Amarmani was a powerful minister in the BSP cabinet in 2003, and also in the Kalyan Singh and Rajnath Singh governments in UP before that. He was said to have enough influence to make and break governments.
She further wrote that she was treated as a “commodity” and that Amarmani asked her to “get the child aborted” even if it resulted in her death.
“Isi beech, dhai mahine ka abortion hua. Tab bhee aap shuru me kahte rahe ki ‘theek hai, paida karenge’ aur baad me aap Dilli se phone par kahte hai ki ‘chahe jaan chali jai par abortion karwa lo’, hame aaj bhi yaad hai (An abortion was done after two-and-a-half months. Initially, you would say ‘fine, we will have the child’ and later you said over calls from Delhi that ‘get an abortion even if you lose your life’, I still remember),” the letter reportedly read.
When asked about Madhumita’s first pregnancy, Nidhi told ThePrint that when she had gone to meet Amarmani for the first time and confronted him about what he had done to her sister, he was “smiling”.
Police officer Pandey, in his memoirs of the case, states that Amarmani got Madhumita a house in Lucknow’s Paper Mill Colony to pacify her.
“Madhumita had refused the medical termination of pregnancy for the third time and put her foot down. She had even started to take pills to ensure that the child survived this time as she had had two abortions before,” the police officer said.
An August 2003 report in The Telegraph stated that in her diary, Madhumita also wrote a letter to God stating that Amarmani wanted to get rid of her and that he never loved her.
Confrontation with Madhumani
According to police officers privy to the Madhumita murder investigation, Madhumani got to know about the house her husband had purchased for Madhumita and confronted him about it.
“After Amarmani refuted the allegation, Madhumani told a neighbour of Madhumita to keep an eye on the latter and her husband,” Pandey said.
In his video memoirs, Pandey mentions a particular incident when Amarmani had gone to meet Madhumita alone at her house in the winter of 2001 and Madhumani had reached the spot — an instance that is mentioned by the CBI in its case diary as well.
“She searched the entire house but Amarmani was hiding under an old mattress. Madhumita called her sister Nidhi and she arrived at the spot and called another acquaintance, Najeeb Khan. The latter somehow convinced Madhumani to leave the spot. Amarmani came out and left in Najeeb’s car after she (Madhumani) exited the house,” Pandey recalls.
After this incident, Madhumani started making calls to Madhumita and the latter once told her how her husband had destroyed her life. In one such call, in a fit of rage, Madhumita told Madhumani that she was again pregnant with Amarmani’s child, he adds.
According to the police officer, Madhumani lost her patience and started hatching a conspiracy along with Rohit Chaturvedi to eliminate Madhumita.
Amarmani’s one last bid ‘to save Madhumita’
When Chaturvedi informed Amarmani about his wife’s plans in April 2003, he first did not react but later told him to inform him before the murder took place so that he could ensure that he was out of Lucknow that day and his name did not crop up anywhere, Pandey mentions in his memoirs.
However, before the murder, Amarmani made a last attempt to save Madhumita and sent his confidant Pappu Chaudhary to her house on 6 May 2003, with a pregnancy termination form. Chaudhary was to act like the unborn child’s father, according to what the CBI told the court, as noted by the order mentioned above.
“The form was already filled up and only signatures were left. It was later concluded that Pappu Chaudhary did not go to Madhumita’s house as he didn’t have the courage to do so,” Pandey says.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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