Man facing 32 charges runs for office

Babloo Srivastava has spent the last 10 years in a northern Indian prison facing 32 charges, including murder and kidnapping. But that won't stop him from running in state elections. Srivastava will run his campaign from prison as Uttar Pradesh, a northern Indian state infamous for crime and political violence, heads to the polls next month.

"Necessary permission has been taken from the election commission," Srivastava's lawyer Ram Ugrah Shukla said in the state capital Lucknow on Friday.

Indian law only bars a person from running for office once they are convicted of a crime by a court, which often happens years, even decades, after an arrest.

Srivastava was charged with murder and running a kidnapping and extortion racket before his arrest in Singapore in 1997. He has never been convicted of any wrongdoing. He will run as an independent candidate without the backing of any major political group, Shukla said.

Politics in this Indian state and many others is dominated by local strongmen who often use violence to intimidate rivals' supporters. At least eight people were killed in Uttar Pradesh's last state elections in 2002. Click on title for rest of story...