Fresh plea in SC against grant of bail to Mohammad Shahabuddin

New Delhi: In fresh trouble for RJD leader Mohammad Shahabuddin, the mother of three youths who were brutally killed by henchmen of the controversial politician has moved the Supreme Court seeking cancellation of bail granted to him in the case in which he has already been sentenced to life. The woman, whose two sons were killed and her third son, who was an eyewitness to the incident, later on, murdered allegedly at the instance of Shahabuddin, has challenged the Patna High Court’s 2 March this year order granting regular bail to him during pendency of his appeal. [caption id=“attachment_3010388” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File photo of Mohammad Shahabuddin. PTI[/caption] While a sessions court in Siwan had convicted Shahabuddin for the offence of murder and kidnapping for ransom in the twin murder case and had awarded life imprisonment to him, the trial in the murder case of the eye witness son is going on. In her plea, Kalawati Devi has claimed that the high court had “completely lost sight” of the fact that Shahabuddin was a “dreaded criminal, who has absolutely no regard for the law, and granting bail to him even though he has been convicted for heinous offences like murder, abduction etc and is still facing trial in many of the cases lodged against him would be travesty of justice”. On 19 September, the apex court had sought a response from Shahabuddin on a separate plea filed by Devi’s husband Chandrakeshwar Prasad challenging the bail granted to him by Patna High Court in the murder case of their third son. The apex court is also hearing a separate plea filed by the widow of journalist Rajdev Ranjan, who was murdered in Siwan allegedly at the instance of Shahabuddin, seeking transfer of the case to Delhi. In her plea, Devi has said that as per an affidavit filed by the Bihar government in the apex court, till November 2014, trials in at least 38 cases were pending against him in which he was facing alleged heinous charges of murder, attempt to murder, rioting with deadly weapon, extortion and others. Her plea is likely to come up for hearing before the apex court on Monday. Devi has said in her plea, filed through advocate Prashant Bhushan, that her two sons, Girish and Satish, were abducted by Shahabuddin’s henchmen and after being brutally assaulted, they were killed by acid poured on them and their bodies, packed in a sack full of salt, buried. The plea alleged that Devi’s third son, Rajiv Roshan, was initially abducted but he had managed to escape. He was an eye-witness to the killing of his two brothers. She claimed that during pendency of trial in the twin murder case, Roshan was killed in June 2014 allegedly at the behest of Shahabuddin who is facing trial in the case. “The High Court did not consider that, apart from being terror as dreaded criminal, Shahabuddin is considered to be a very influential person in Siwan as he is a two-time MLA and four-time MP from there. Being convicted in many criminal cases, he has been debarred from contesting since 2009 general elections,” the plea claimed. It said that some of the cases could not be proved against him due to lack of evidence as sometimes Shahabuddin “managed to influence the prosecution or sometime witnesses were too afraid of deposing against him”. “The grant of bail to a history-sheeter like Shahabuddin is travesty of justice. If the bail granted Shahabuddin is not stayed by this court, irreparable injury is going to cause to the interest of the present case as well as other pending cases,” it said, adding, “there is a serious threat to the life of the petitioner and his family members”. Shahabuddin, who was granted bail by the Patna High Court on 7 September in another case, was released from Bhagalpur jail on 10 September. He was in jail for 11 years in connection with dozens of cases against him.