G Krishnaiah was dragged out of his ambassador car by the mob. (File)
G Krishnaiah, the District Magistrate of Bihar's Gopalganj who was killed by a mob in 1994, may have lived had he not asked for his car to be stopped to rescue his bodyguard, the driver of the senior bureaucrat has told NDTV.
"We were coming back from Hajipur in 1994 after a meeting when a juloos (mob) attacked us. It has hard to know who all was in it," Deepak Kumar said over the telephone amid renewed interest in the case because of the impending release of one of the killers, gangster-politician Anand Mohan Singh.
"The mob first pulled out Krishnaiah sir's bodyguard from the ambassador. I didn't stop the car and tried to speed past the crowd. But sir asked me to stop the car because he wanted to save the bodyguard who was left behind," he said.
"As soon as I stopped the car, the mob attacked us. They beat me up so badly that I developed a hearing disability. That was the last time I saw Krishnaiah sir," Mr Kumar said.
"I managed to run for my life. After some time, when I came back, I saw sir lying lifeless in the pit. We took him to the hospital," he said, adding, "Krishnaiah sir was very good to us always."
The bureaucrat was attacked on a December evening in a village on the outskirts of Muzaffarpur city by the mob protesting with the body of Chhotan Shukla, another gangster-politician of Anand Mohan's party, who was killed a day earlier.
G Krishnaiah died that day, and Deepak Kumar's testimony was part of the case that resulted in the conviction of Anand Mohan Singh. Singh is now being released because the Bihar government has changed rules in, what critics say, is an effort to woo voters from his community.
He was sentenced to death by a lower court in 2007, but the Patna High Court later commuted the penalty to life imprisonment. He has been in jail for 15 years.
The Rajput strongman, whose son is an MLA from Lalu Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, is among 27 prisoners set to be released after the Nitish Kumar-led Bihar government tweaked the prison rules, allowing remission of jail term for those convicted of murdering a public servant on duty.
The change in rules and Anand Mohan Singh's release have stirred up huge controversy. His widow Uma Krishnaiah has even requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to intervene and ask Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to take the decision back.