By IANS,
Lucknow : Prompted by the remarks of the Allahabad High Court, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati Wednesday ordered a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the murder of two chief medical officers (CMOs) of Lucknow.
She also referred to the CBI the entire case of alleged bungling in the Rs.3,000 crore National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), that was seen at the root of the series of murders of government doctors.
Two chief medical officers of the state capital – B.P.Singh and Vinod Arya – were murdered and deputy chief medical officer Y.S. Sachan was found dead in a jail here between October 2010 and June 2011.
Barely six hours after the Lucknow bench of the high court comprising Justice Pradeep Kant and Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi asked the state government “why not a CBI probe into the murder of two other CMOs”, Mayawati was propelled to take a quick decision to do so herself.
The chief minister’s decision came in exactly the same manner as it did in the case of the death Sachan, who was found dead in mysterious circumstances inside the Lucknow district prison June 22.
It was about 15 hours after the court reserved its judgment on a public interest litigation (PIL), seeking a CBI probe into Sachan’s murder, that the chief minister July 14 announced her decision to refer the case to the federal probe agency.
The court’s observation Wednesday came on a petition filed by lawyer Prince Lenin, who sought a CBI inquiry into the murders of the two CMOs.
Even as both murders were committed over a span of six months, both Singh and Arya were gunned down in almost similar circumstances – during their morning walk very close to their respective homes in Lucknow.
The court also ordered a CBI probe into the alleged bungling in the centrally-funded Rs. 3,000-crore NRHM on a separate public interest litigation (PIL) moved by local journalist Sachchidanand Gupta.
The government decision comes in sharp contrast to its earlier stand of opposing any CBI intervention in all these cases. The U-turn followed after the court expressed its displeasure over the shoddy investigations carried out by police.