By IANS,
Lucknow : Uttar Pradesh’s opposition Samajwadi Party had apparently “used” a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator to “get involved” in the murder of a government engineer, Chief Minister Mayawati said here Saturday.
“In their bid to defame my government, the opposition has apparently used BSP MLA Shekhar Tiwari to indulge in vandalism and get involved in the murder of PWD executive engineer Manoj Kumar Gupta,” BSP chief Mayawati told a press conference here.
Tiwari has been arrested for his alleged role in the murder of Gupta who was lynched in Auraiya, about 250 km from here, early Wednesday.
The opposition parties have said the legislator was extorting funds ahead of Mayawati’s birthday Jan 15.
“I have a reason to suspect some mischief on the part of the opposition because Shekhar Tiwari is a party hopper and had switched loyalties from the Samajwadi Party to our party. Being a drunkard, he could have been easily used by the Samajwadi Party to indulge in criminal acts to defame the BSP,” she said.
“I am thinking of getting him subjected to a narco-analysis test to get to the bottom of the whole thing,” she said.
“Revelations about Tiwari’s alcoholism and criminal antecedents were brought before me only after the unfortunate incident,” she added.
However, she skirted a query about who was responsible for Tiwari’s induction into the party.
“We are trying to find that out,” she quipped, before dismissing the press conference.
For Tiwari’s criminal background too, she sought to pass the buck on the opposition.
“Tiwari had his roots in the Congress after which he did a stint in the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), before joining the Samajwadi Party, where he got a free hand to build a criminal career,” she said.
She added: “He had not indulged in any criminal activity after joining BSP.”
Asserting that her government was committed to bringing the guilty to book under all circumstances, she said: “There is no way such a person would get reprieve from my administration. We have already sent him to jail and slapped all the stringent laws on him. The police have also sought his remand now.”