POLITICS
Violent past of Bihar ex-MP Prabhunath Singh & what led SC to overturn his acquittal in 1995 murder
- Admin
- Sep 03, 2023
Violent past of Bihar ex-MP Prabhunath Singh & what led SC to overturn his acquittal in 1995 murder
Singh, a strongman who once wielded great power in Saran region was awarded life sentence Friday. SC order decries tainted probe & use of political muscle that led to acquittal.
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.
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.
