By IANS,
Lucknow : After an exhaustive probe that lasted over a year and saw the interrogation of more than 100 people, including policemen and officials, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Friday filed a closure report on the death of senior medical officer Y.S. Sachan and inferred that it was a case of suicide.
Sachan had served as deputy chief medical officer with the Family Welfare Department of the state government, and had been in jail as he was accused of embezzling funds funds under the National Rural Health Mission, and also of the murder of two chief medical officers, B.P. Singh and Vinod Arya.
The premier investigation agency, in its 111-page report submitted before a special CBI court, said that forensic evidence in the case pointed to suicide. Sachan was found dead in the jail toilet on June 22, 2011. His body had deep gashes, and a leather belt was tied around his neck.
Sachan was arrested in April 2011 for allegedly ordering the murder of his boss, B.P. Singh. He had spent two months in jail when his body was discovered in the jail toilet. There were reports that he was on the verge of spilling the beans on some “important names”.
Allegations were made that Sachan had been murdered. The doctor’s family, and some political parties suspected murder. The then Mayawati government, in July 2011, recommended a CBI probe.
A judicial probe had earlier concluded that this was a case of murder.
The autopsy contradicted claims that the doctor had committed suicide, as government agencies had held. Forensic experts claimed that the gashes on the body were too deep to be self-inflicted.
The CBI however, citing experts from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and the Central Foresic Science Laboratory, has said that the nine wounds on Sachan’s body were self-inflicted. Blood stains in the toilet, the CBI said, matched Sachan’s samples.
The agency has however recommended that the state government inquire into the improper handling of a note written by Sachan to three officials – then Inspector General, Prisons, V.K. Gupta, jail warden Pahender Singh and head warden Baburam Dubey.