New Delhi: A chequered and abnormal history, the glaringly peculiar facts of the case, a tainted investigation, the high-handedness of the accused — these are some of the reasons that “compelled” the Supreme Court Friday to sentence former MP Prabhunath Singh to life imprisonment in a 1995 double murder case in Bihar.
The Supreme Court adopted a “path different from the normal” to reverse Singh’s acquittal by the trial court and the Patna High Court.
The case involved the killing of two persons — Rajendra Rai (18) and Daroga Rai (47) — who were shot dead near a polling booth in Chhapra during the assembly elections in March 1995, allegedly because they did not vote the way Singh’s wanted. Daroga died on the spot, while Rajendra succumbed to injuries five months later.
In December 2008, a trial court acquitted Singh, and the Patna High Court upheld this in December 2011.
Reversing this, the Supreme Court pronounced Singh guilty on 18 August through a 143-page judgment, which severely indicted the “insensitive” police machinery as well as the judiciary — both the trial court and Patna High Court — that acquitted Singh citing a lack of evidence. ThePrint has seen the judgment.
The judgment finds a series of flaws in the police investigation of the case. It goes into Singh’s strong influence on the system then, the terror he wielded in Bihar’s Saran region and the “undesirable favour” extended to him by the public prosecutor, police machinery and the presiding officer of the trial court.
A history of violence and terror
Singh, who is already serving a life sentence in jail in connection with another 1995 murder case — that of an MLA, Ashok Singh — has a history of violence and terror in Bihar’s politics.
Known as a henchman of then MLA Ram Dev Singh, Singh entered politics in 1980s, soon after the legislator was shot dead. Though Singh was arrested for the alleged murder, he was later acquitted.
He became MLA from Masrakh as an Independent in 1985 and then again as a Janata Dal candidate in 1990. “He used to terrorise people and often tortured those who defied him,” Tarkeshwar Singh, another former Masrakh MLA, told ThePrint.
Tarkeshwar is the brother of Ashok Singh, who Singh murdered three months after losing an election to him. Ashok Singh reportedly died in a bomb blast outside his official residence in Patna.
Singh was moved to Hazaribagh jail and the trial in the case was also moved to the trial court there. In 2017, 22 years after the killing, a court convicted Singh to life imprisonment, which the Jharkhand High Court upheld in 2020. After the birfurcation of Bihar, the Hazaribagh region fell in Jharkhand.
A political opportunist
Traditionally, Saran district has witnessed political rivalry between two castes — Rajputs and Yadavs. This is one of the reasons even a leader like Lalu Prasad Yadav had to struggle to win from Chhapra.
With a reputation as the ‘dabang’ (domineering) leader of the region, Singh, a Rajput, became the chosen leader of Nitish Kumar’s party in Saran. Popularly called the “don”, he won the Maharajganj parliamentary seat in 1998, 1999 and 2004 as the candidate of Nitish’s Samata Party till 1998, and the Janata Dal (United) after that.
Singh lost in 2009, following which he joined hands with Lalu, who had once publicly called him a “goonda” (gangster) but now welcomed him.
Singh won a bypoll in Maharajgaj on a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) ticket in 2013 but lost again in 2014. The one time he was in the news in relation to Parliament was in 2009 when he reportedly said, “I don’t like the face of Sonia Gandhi or her voice”.
He later courted controversy in 2014 when he reportedly threatened the then district magistrate-cum-returning officer of Saran, Kundan Kumar, on camera.
Kumar had reportedly lodged two FIRs for poll-related offences against Singh, who was then engaged in a bitter tussle with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the JD(U) to retain his Maharajganj Lok Sabha seat.
Ever since he was jailed in 2017, Singh’s influence seems to have declined. Neither Lalu nor Nitish appear to want him anymore to build their base in the region that Singh once controlled, a JD(U) MLA told ThePrint.
Meanwhile, in the daylight double murder case of Rajendra Rai and Daroga Rai, the charges were framed 11 years after the police filed their chargesheet in the matter.
Singh was neither arrested nor did he surrender. Considering his power and influence, the then district magistrate of Saran recommended the transfer of the trial in the case to Hazaribagh, which was approved by the high court. In 2000, upon the reorganisation of Bihar, the case was transferred to Bhagalpur.
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The flaws and delays
One of the serious flaws in the police probe, the Supreme Court found, was the absence of crucial witnesses in the police chargesheet, including Rajendra’s mother, Lalmuni Devi, who had accompanied her son to the hospital and was one of the first few witnesses to give their version of the incident. This, the court added, severely weakened the case against the accused.
Repeated attempts by the said witnesses to get themselves called for examination during the trial were rejected on “flimsy grounds” by the trial court, which also refused to accept the First Information Report (FIR) in the case as a piece of evidence, the SC said.
Going a step ahead, the Patna HC discredited Lalmuni and declared her to be a tutored witness. Both the trial court and the HC ignored the fact that Lalmuni was not presented as a police witness but summoned as a court witness, and that Singh’s men abducted her and her husband days before she was scheduled to record her statement, the SC highlighted.
The SC noted in its judgment that, while the trial court took more than a decade to frame charges in March 2006, it recorded statements of 11 witnesses in a day, seven of which, it said, were similar in content. All these seven were declared hostile.
On 23 October 2006, the trial court summoned Lalmuni to record her statement. A day later, she and her husband were abducted. When complaints made to the police resulted in no action, Lalmuni’s other son approached the Patna HC through habeas corpus, seeking the production of his parents, said the SC judgment.
Soon, after, Lalmuni appeared before the police on 2 November, 2006, and recorded her statement in the trial court a day later. On that day, violence was witnessed inside the courtroom, where Lalmuni’s family was assaulted by Singh’s men.
A report prepared by an HC judge on the incident criticised the trial court judge who, it said, did nothing to prevent the violence. The inspecting judge’s report also delved into the abduction of Lalmuni and ruled that the motive behind it was not to let her make a statement to the court, the judgment said.
Lalmuni was, thereafter, called to the HC, which got her statement recorded before a magistrate and then itself. In the said statement, Lalmuni unequivocally named Singh in her son’s murder case, the SC judgment highlighted.
After taking note of her statement and the inspecting judge’s report on the violence and Lalmuni’s abduction, as well as a senior Bihar police officer’s report, the HC in March 2007 directed the re-examination of police witnesses in the case. It also ordered the trial to be moved out of Bhagalpur to Patna.
The second round of the trial saw a further travesty of justice, the apex court found. In the SC’s opinion, the prosecution this time tried to make up for the lacunae left during the earlier round of the examination of witnesses. Their statements deliberately did not mention Lalmuni’s presence at the spot, the court noted.
“Whatever was not stated earlier to protect the accused was stated in this round of the statement,” the SC said, noting that the evidence of five other witnesses who were examined earlier was given to the court in the form of affidavits.
One doctor was re-examined and further strengthened the defence’s version that the victims were unconscious when they were brought to the hospital. This became the basis for discarding the testimony of Rajendra, who had died five months after the shooting, the SC judgment said.
Even though Lalmuni remained firm in her testimony, the trial court did not consider it and acquitted the accused.
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SC’s intervention and judgment
The acquittal came under the scrutiny of the Patna HC after Rajendra’s family filed a grievance petition there.
According to the SC verdict, a report on the administrative side noticed glaring deficiencies, both deliberate and malicious, step by step. It found mischief not only on the part of the investigating agency but also the public prosecutor and the presiding judge of the trial court, who, it said, did not discharge their pious duty of doing justice.
The 2009 report recommended appropriate action against the trial court and pushed the HC to register a revision petition against the acquittal order. Notwithstanding the two reports on the administrative side, the HC in December 2011 upheld the acquittal of Singh and others. It declared Lalmuni a tutored witness, the judgment noted.
In a rare move, to do “substantial justice,” the apex court, in its judgment, took note of the Patna HC’s March 2007 verdict, which drew an adverse inference against the accused and their subsequent conduct during the trial.
The SC declared this judgment to be factual evidence, which it said, can be read against Singh to determine his guilt. In doing so, it made use of Section 56 of the Evidence Act, which is done only in exceptional cases where a “fact” need not be adduced through “evidence.”
“In the said judgment, certain inferences, observations and findings arrived at by the division bench have a crucial impact on the merit of the present case, as it gives a complete picture as to how the prosecution version in the present case was being demolished brick by brick by using political authority and muscle power with the aid of not only the police administration but also the public prosecutor,” the SC commented on the HC’s 2007 decision.
“Unfortunately, the presiding officer of the trial court also conducted himself in a manner unbecoming of a judicial officer, despite directions and continuous vigil by the high court,” it added.
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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