The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the trial court order convicting and awarding life imprisonment to Munna Shukla and one other in the 1998 former Bihar minister Brij Bihari Prasad murder case. The top court, however, gave benefit of doubt to six other accused, including former MP Surajbhan Singh, and upheld their acquittal as ordered by the high court in the case.
The crucial verdict by the apex court came after Rama Devi - Brij Bihari Prasad's wife and former BJP MP - and the CBI had challenged the high court's 2014 order acquitting the accused for lack of evidence.
A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Sanjay Kumar and R Mahadevan partially set aside the Patna High Court verdict acquitting all the accused and asked convicts Mantu Tiwari and ex-MLA Shukla to surrender within 15 days.
The bench said charges under 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC have been established against Tiwari and Vijay Kumar Shukla alias Munna Shukla and asked them to surrender within 15 days.
On July 24, 2014, the high court had said that after perusing the prosecution evidence, Surajbhan Singh alias Suraj Singh, Mukesh Singh, Lallan Singh, Mantu Tiwari, Captain Sunil Singh, Ram Niranjan Choudhary, Shashi Kumar Rai, Munna Shukla and Rajan Tiwari deserve grant of benefit of doubt.
It had set aside the trial court's August 12, 2009 order convicting them and awarding all the accused life sentences. Former BJP MP Rama Devi, who is the wife of Brij Bihari Prasad, and the CBI had challenged the high court's 2014 order acquitting the accused for lack of evidence.
(With PTI inputs)
