The Bihar government fielded chief secretary Amir Subhani on Thursday to defend the release of muscleman and former Lok Sabha member Anand Mohan Singh from jail.

Singh was convicted of the murder of 1985-batch IAS officer and then Gopalganj district magistrate G. Krishnaiah in 1994. He was part of a mob accompanying the funeral procession of another gangster, Chhotan Shukla, that had attacked Krishnaiah while he was passing through Muzaffarpur. The trial court awarded Singh the death sentence in 2007 but Patna High Court later commuted it to life imprisonment.

“He (Singh) was released according to the provisions of law and the prison rules. Prisoners undergoing life imprisonment could be released if they have undergone at least 14 years of incarceration, their behaviour has been good during it, and their jail term including parihaar (remission of sentence) totals up to 20 years,” Subhani said.

The chief secretary added that Singh had spent around 15 years and 10 months in prison and his total jail term, including remission reward points calculated in months and years, happened to be 22 years 13 days.

Singh, 75, was released from Saharsa district jail on Thursday after the government of chief minister Nitish Kumar silently tweaked the Bihar Prison Manual, 2012, earlier this month to drop its rule 481(1)(a) that forbade the early release of people convicted of killing a public servant.

The government issued a release order on April 24 for 27 prisoners, including Singh, undergoing life imprisonment.