The Supreme Court on Friday convicted Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former Member of Parliament (MP) Prabhunath Singh in the 1995 Masrakh double murder case and overturned his earlier acquittal by the Patna High Court.
He is currently serving life sentence in another murder case. In 2017, a trial court convicted him in connection with the 1995 murder of MLA Ashok Singh, who had defeated Prabhunath Singh in the Bihar assembly elections in the same year. Prabhunath Singh had threatened to eliminate Ashok Singh within 90 days of the election.
A bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice AS Oka and Justice Vikram Nath convicted three-time Janata Dal (United) or JD (U) and one-time RJD MP from Maharajganj Prabhunath Singh in the double murder case. The court said there was sufficient evidence to support the allegation that he had killed 18-year-old Rajendra Rai and 47-year-old Daroga Rai near a polling booth in Chhapra in March 1995.
Two people were shot as a result of not voting as instructed by Prabhunath Singh. Due to concerns of intimidation and influencing witnesses, the Patna High Court had transferred the case from Chapra. In December 2008, a Patna court acquitted Prabhunath Singh, citing insufficient evidence. In 2012, the Patna High Court upheld this order. In response, Rajendra Rai’s brother challenged Prabhunath Singh’s acquittal in the Supreme Court.
Justice Nath, reading out the operative part of the judgement, said, “We set aside the impugned judgment of the Patna High Court and hold Prabhunath Singh guilty under section 302 (murder) for the murder 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 during the next scheduled hearing for deliberations on sentence.
The court supported the acquittal of six other co-accused in the same case and fixed September 1 for the next hearing to decide the quantum of sentence for Prabhunath Singh. The punishment for murder can be life imprisonment and capital punishment.
Prabhunath Singh joined the Janata Dal in 1995 and later became a member of the JD (U) before forging an alliance with the RJD in 2010 following a rift with chief minister Nitish Kumar.
