Controversial former minister and SP MLA Amarmani Tripathi is back in news again — and also for all the wrong reasons.
This time, in a video clip, Amarmani Tripathi who is presently lodged in Hardwar jail, is seen making a fervent appeal to the voters in his constituency Laxmipur in Maharajganj to ensure the victory of his son, Amarmani Tripathi, who has been fielded by the Samajwadi Party for the upcoming Assembly polls. In the video clip, Amarmani is shown making his address with a poster of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav in the backdrop. He is seen asking voters what wrong he had done to deserve the jail term.
“Kya maine chori ki, kya maine dakaiti ki? Kya kiya hai maine? Bade bade chor dacaoit bahar ghoom rahen hain aur mera parivar jail me hai. Mere bachcha sadak par hai. Agar aap Samajwadi Party ko jita dete hain, to main bahar aa sakunga, (Have I robbed someone, have I been involved in dacoity? What have I done? Big thieves and dacoits are roaming free but my family is in jail and my children are on the streets. If you vote the Samajwadi Party to power, I will be able to walk free),” he says.
Since Amarmani has been in jail since the past six years and the video, therefore, has been shot inside the jail. The speaker stand on which Amarmani is shown making his speech carries the name “Panna” and investigations revealed that “Panna” is actually Panna Sounds, a local company in Gorakhpur that gives sound systems on hire.
When contacted, the person who responded to the phone call admitted that “Panna” was his company’s brand name and anyone could have hired the system.
“We do not know if the system was taken to jail because we do not verify all this,” the person, who refused to be identified, said.
This makes it clear that the video was shot sometime in August when Amar Mani was in Gorakhpur and had got admitted to a local nursing home feigning sickness. His parole for his mother’s cremation was instantly cancelled and he was sent back to Hardwar jail on September 7.
Jail officials denied that the video was made inside the jail. “It could have been made during the period when the controversial politician was out of parole,” said an official.
It may be recalled that in the 2007 Assembly elections, Amar Mani who was then a contestant himself, had allegedly addressed a public rally through a mobile phone from inside the jail and the Uttarakhand government had ordered an inquiry into the incident.