Mayavati: Third blow

Dec. 27: A senior government engineer today said the Bahujan Samaj Party MLA accused of murdering engineer M.K. Gupta was a serial extortionist who had terrorised Auraiya.

The fresh blow to Mayavati came a day after Gupta’s son Pratish, 14, snubbed her by refusing the Rs 5-lakh compensation, saying it was money that lay at the root of his father’s murder.

In a third setback, the National Human Rights Commission asked for details of the murder and the action taken within two weeks.

Gupta, executive engineer in Auraiya’s public works department (PWD), was tortured to death allegedly because he had resisted MLA Shekhar Tiwari’s efforts to extort money for Mayavati’s birthday celebrations — a charge denied by the chief minister.

However, Gupta’s predecessor in the Auraiya PWD, C.D. Rai, today said Tiwari would regularly arm-twist engineers for money towards party funds. Rai, now posted in Mathura, also alleged the MLA pressured the PWD to hand contracts to people he knew and threatened engineers if they resisted.

Gupta had allegedly refused to release a contractor’s payment prematurely so the businessman could pay Tiwari Rs 50 lakh. The police brass said it was up to the investigating officers to record Rai’s statement.

Mayavati’s efforts to pin the murder on a PWD “conspiracy” too suffered a blow.

Gupta’s wife Shashi had reported hearing the attackers address one another as “Bhatia” and “Tyagi”, and state police chief Vikram Singh had claimed the two men were Gupta’s colleagues.

Today, state PWD minister Nasimuddin Siddique denied the Auraiya PWD had engineers named Bhatia or Tyagi. Some officers said BSP district chief Yogendra Dohre had the nickname “Bhatia”.

Mayavati changed tack to say she smelt a “political conspiracy” and that Tiwari, whom she called a drunkard, would be put through narco-analysis to see if he had been a pawn in a game.

The Centre said it was ready to order a CBI probe if Mayavati recommended one, while the chief minister said she would agree to one if the agency also probed police recruitment during Samajwadi Party rule.

In Delhi, Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan sought the sack for Mayavati saying BSP men had shot dead a youth leader of his Lok Janshakti Party, Manish Yadav, in Agra last night for refusing to pay Rs 2 lakh towards the chief minister’s birthday.

Yesterday, Gupta’s son told a government delegation: “There is no need for (compensation) money. It’s because of money that I have lost my father. What we want is a CBI probe.” Officials said the family would be persuaded to accept the money.

Tiwari, who has been sent to police remand for five days, faced several criminal charges when Mayavati gave him a ticket for the 2007 state polls. Accused of kidnapping a trader’s eight-year-old son, he was freed on bail in 2005. He faces charges of criminally intimidating four persons in 2006, and had allegedly led a mob attack on BJP leaders in 2005.