Patna: The Patna High Court on Wednesday upheld the life imprisonment awarded to former Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) parliamentarian Mohammad Shahabuddin by a lower court for murder of two brothers with acid more than a decade back.
This is the second biggest setback for the incarcerated RJD politician in the past one week. Last week, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had filed a charge-sheet against him in the killing of a local journalist Rajdeo Ranjan. The politician is currently lodged in high-security Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
A bench of Patna High Court, comprising Justice KK Mandal and Justice Sanjay Kumar, on Wednesday refused to interfere in the lower court’s judgement delivered in December 2015. The Additional District Judge of Siwan special court Ajay Kumar Srivastava had then awarded life term to Shahabuddin, terming it as the “rarest of rare case”.
According to the police records, three sons of local businessman Chandra Keshwar Prasad were kidnapped from their home in Siwan district by three accomplices of Shahabuddin and taken to Pratappur village where two of them were killed in cold blood by pouring acid on them. Pratappur is the native village of Shahabuddin.
Despite repeated efforts, the bodies of the victims could not be recovered by the police. The third kidnapped victim, though, somehow managed to escape and saved his life.
Later, a case of murder was registered with the local police by the victims’ mother, Kalawati Devi, charging Shahabuddin’s three henchmen with the murder of her sons. Officials said initially Shahabuddin was not made an accused in the case but during the course of investigation, his name cropped up and he too was made an accused for hatching conspiracy in kidnapping of the three siblings.
The lone surviving brother appeared before the judge as an eyewitness in the case, but was subsequently murdered by unidentified assailants on June 16, 2014.
Shahabuddin has more than 40 criminal cases pending against him, such as murder, kidnapping, theft, violation of Foreign Exchange Act and treason. He has already been sentenced to life term in connection with kidnapping-and-murder of a Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) leader, 10-year imprisonment for possessing illegal arms and ammunition, as well as three year’s rigorous imprisonment in a case of vehicle theft.
