Close on the heels of facing a gangrape charge by a girl in Shahjahenpur, State Minister for Backward Class Welfare, Ram Murti Singh Verma finally seems to have fallen in deep trouble when the local police in Shahjahenpur had finally booked him for hatching a criminal conspiracy with the help of police personnel and his henchmen to eliminate a journalist.
The scribe, Jagendra Singh, who made allegations against the Minister and local cops of Shahjahenpur in his ‘dying declaration’ before the Magistrate, succumbed to his burn injuries on Monday evening. IG (law and Order) A Satish Ganesh, who confirmed of registration of the case claimed that no one was arrested in the matter. Director General of Police, Arvind Kumar Jain, said that he directed DIG Bareilly Range, RKS Rathore, to get the matter probed on priority and take appropriate action.
Interestingly, so far not even the cops were placed under suspension and local officers already advocated their innocence in the matter. The same inspector was named in the gangrape and now in murder along with Verma. However, just after the scribe succumbed, the same officers who refused to register a case even after the victim made a ‘dying declaration’ now get the case registered on Tuesday morning.
According to reports from Shahjahenpur, an FIR has been registered against Minister Ram Murti Singh Verma, Station House Officer of Kotwali police station, inspector Shree Prakash Rai, besides four others identified as Gufran, Akash Gupta, Amit Pratap Singh and Bhure for allegedly killing Jagendra Singh by setting him afire. The FIR has been lodged under IPC 302 (murder), 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation). The FIR was registered at Kuthar police station on the basis of a complaint by Jagendra’s son Raghvendra, and it will be now transferred to Kotwali police station for further enquiry.
According to the family members of the deceased, Jagendra had posted something on facebook against the Minister regarding his alleged involvement in illegal mining and land grabbing. The family alleged that during a raid at the journalist’s house at Awas Vikas colony in Sadar Bazar area of Shahjahanpur on June 1, police officials brutally assaulted him and later set him afire, following which he was critically injured and was shifted to a hospital in lucknow.
Before his death, Jagendra had accused Verma of “unleashing” a reign of terror on him and his family for his investigative reports and comments against the Minister. He claimed that on April 28 also, he was brutally assaulted by henchmen of the Minister following which he received a fracture.
Meanwhile, Congress leader Surendra Rajput demanded immediate removal of the Minister and to constitute a probe into the matter. “The name of Minister Ram Murti first in the gangrape case and now for conspiring to get a journalist killed, is a black spot on the Ministry of Akhilesh Yadav, and the Chief Minister should not wait for a minute now and expel such Minister if he wanted to give justice in the matter,” asserted Rajput adding that a fair probe till Verma remained a Minister is any one’s guess.