A trial court convicted Prabhunath Singh guilty in 2017 in relation to the death of Ashok Singh, a lawmaker who was his opponent in the 1995 Bihar Assembly Election.
The Supreme Court overturned Prabhunath Singh’s earlier acquittal in a double murder case from 1995 by finding the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former Member of Parliament (MP) guilty on Friday.
In another murder case, Singh is currently serving a life sentence. In connection with the 1995 slaying of lawmaker Ashok Singh, who lost to Prabhunath Singh in the 1995 Bihar assembly election, a trial court declared him guilty in 2017. Within 90 days of the election, Prabhunath Singh had threatened to remove him.
Prabhunath Singh, a three-term Janata Dal (United) or JD(U) and former RJD MP from Maharajganj, was found guilty in the double murder case by a three-judge panel of Sanjay Kishan Kaul, AS Oka, and Vikram Nath, who said there was enough evidence to prove he killed Rajendra Rai, 18, and Daroga Rai, 47, in March 1995 near a voting booth in Chhapra.
Because the two did not cast their votes as Singh had advised, they were shot and killed. The case was moved from Chhapra to Patna when the family members of the deceased claimed that witnesses were being intimidated and coerced. In December 2008, a Patna court cleared Prabhunath Singh of all charges due to a lack of evidence. In 2012, the Patna High Court upheld the conviction. The acquittal was contested by Rajendra Rai’s brother in the supreme court.
“We set aside the impugned order of the Patna high court and convict respondent no 2…Prabhunath Singh, under Section 302 (murder) for the murders of Daroga Rai and Rajendra Rai. We direct the home secretary of…Bihar and the director general of police of the state to arrest Prabhunath Singh and produce him before this court in custody on the next date of hearing to be heard on [the] argument of [the] sentence,” said Justice Nath, reading out the operative part of the judgment.
Six further co-accused were found not guilty, and the court set September 1 as the next date to hear Singh’s case over the severity of the sentence. Either a life sentence or the death penalty can be imposed as punishment for murder. In 1995, Prabhunath Singh joined the Janata Dal. After having a falling out with chief minister Nitish Kumar, he eventually joined JD(U) before joining RJD in 2010.
