By IANS,
Lucknow: A junior of Lucknow’s chief medical officer Dr. B.P.Singh, who was gunned down just outside his residence in the city’s posh Indira Nagar April 2, was behind the killing, officials said Friday.
The breakthrough came with the arrest of three people from the city outskirts’ earlier in the day. They had allegedly shot dead Singh as he left his house for his morning walk on April 2.
Addressing a press conference here, state Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh pointedly blamed Singh’s deputy chief medical officer Dr. Y.S.Sachan as the mastermind behind the murder.
“Sustained investigation and electronic surveillance carried out by the Special Task Force (STF) has established the role of Dr.Sachan in hatching the conspiracy to murder Dr. B.P.Singh, who had apparently become a stumbling block in the large scale pilferage of funds.”
“The three arrested in this connection today (Friday) have also confessed to committing the murder at the behest of Dr. Sachan, who was already behind bars on the basis of prima facie evidence.”
The cabinet secretary said police are likely to seek remand of Dr. Sachan, who would now be interrogated to extract more information regarding the murder as well as the modus operandi devised by him and others to pilfer funds under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).
Uttar Pradesh receives an annual funding of about Rs.3,500 crore under the NRHM.
The three arrested accused have been identified as Ram Krishna Verma, Anand Tiwari and Vinod Tiwari. The cabinet secretary said that of the three, only Anand Tiwari has a criminal record.
“Perhaps it was the absence of their criminal past that caused delay in their arrest,” said state police chief Karamveer Singh, who was also present at the press conference.
Besides a car, STF sleuths have recovered two motor-cycles, two pistols and some cartridges from the possession of the three arrested.
Confessions made by the three also indicate the possibility of their involvement in the murder of Dr. B.P.Singh’s predecessor Dr. Vinod Arya, who was killed in exactly similar manner in October 2010.
Arya too was on his morning walk when masked motor-cyclists shot him down from point blank range, leaving him dead on the spot.
Earlier, Chief Minister Mayawati had made two of her cabinet ministers – Health Minister Anant Kumar Misra and Family Welfare, Cooperatives and Mining Minister Babu Singh Kushwaha – resign for their “moral responsibility” over the murder.