By IANS,
Lucknow : Arrested Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator Shekhar Tiwari Friday confessed that he had beaten and tortured Uttar Pradesh government engineer Manoj Kumar Gupta so brutally that he died on Dec 24 as he wanted to “teach him a lesson”.
“Gupta was terribly uncooperative, so I had to teach him a lesson,” Tiwari is stated to have told an investigating team in Auraiya, 225 km from here, where he lynched the Public Works Department executive engineer.
Disclosing this, Additional Director General of Police (law and order) Brij Lal told reporters here Friday evening, “During the course of interrogation, Shekhar Tiwari gave a detailed account of the entire sequence of events, including whatever preceded and followed the killing.”
According to Lal, “He admitted to beating Gupta to death because of the latter’s refusal to cooperate in clearing bills related to works undertaken by the MLA’s henchmen. Tiwari also narrated how he broke into the engineer’s house around 3 a.m. on Dec 24, pulled him out and took him to the GAIL guest house, where the MLA was camping.”
Brij Lal said, “Tiwari confessed that he was drunk and he not only thrashed Gupta with a baton, but also tortured him with electric shocks. On realising that the engineer was dead, he conveniently dumped the body at the Dibiyapur police station, where his stooge police inspector was told to find his own way to hush up the case.”
Almost two hours later, the inspector sent Gupta’s body to the district hospital, where he was declared “brought dead”, the official added.
Lal went on to add: “The role of Tiwari’s wife too is being probed as she was alleged to have destroyed some evidence in the GAIL guest house where the engineer was subjected to physical torture, which led to his death.”
Asked if the wife too would be arrested, Lal said, “Well, we have no such plan as of now but we have formally directed her to cooperate in the investigations.”
Tiwari is stated to have told the police that unlike the earlier executive engineers who were always ready to sign on the dotted line, Gupta had become a stumbling block in getting the payments against various jobs carried out for the PWD by his cohorts.
Significantly, the investigating team avoided any questions related to the key issue – whether the extortion by the MLA was intended to meet his reported contribution of Rs.50 lakh(Rs.5 million) for Chief Minister Mayawati’s birthday bash slated for Jan 15. The engineer’s family has been alleging that the lawmaker lynched the engineer because he had refused to pay up.