Thaindian News

Lucknow, Aug 26 (IANS) Over two months after being released on grounds of ill-health at the age of 108, Brij Bihari Pandey, a murder convict, breathed his last in his ancestral village in Uttar Pradesh’s Maharajganj district, officials said Friday.

Pandey died Thursday in Barhada village, some 250 km from Lucknow, at his ancestral home where he lived with his three sons, police inspector Ram Badai said.

Pandey was freed from Gorakhpur district jail June 17 following special bail granted to him by the Allahabad High Court.

Describing Pandey as the “oldest prisoner in the history of Indian prisons”, Gorakhpur District Magistrate Hari Om had said: “The man was released following a bail order issued by the Allahabad High Court on grounds of ill-health due to old age.”

“We are waiting for some of our relatives. The last rites would be performed along the bank of Narayani river near the village,” Pandey’s grandson Munna Kumar told reporters

According to police, Pandey was jailed in 2009 after being convicted along with 15 others for the murder of four people in Maharajganj over inheritance of a Hindu religious institution in 1987.

Pandey spent less than a year in jail as an undertrial in 1988.

The trial went on for more than two decades until 2009, when Pandey was convicted along with others to life imprisonment. His health was on a natural slide and went on deteriorating, following which police had moved an application for his release on grounds of infirmities and illness that was accepted by the court.