Lucknow:
Under intense pressure, the Mayawati government on Wednesday recommended a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the murders of two Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) - Dr BP Singh and Dr Vinod Arya. This comes barely a week after the agency was asked to investigate the mysterious death of their colleague Y S Sachan in a Lucknow jail.
The BSP government, which has been facing an Opposition onslaught, also decided to hand over to the CBI the probe into alleged financial irregularities in the family welfare department which reportedly led to the murder of Mr Arya and Mr Singh.
Two state ministers, Babu Singh Khushwaha and Anant Kumar Mishra, had resigned on moral grounds due to the controversy.
"The state government decided to hand over both the cases to the CBI for further investigation so that the agency could go into the depth of deputy CMO Y S Sachan's death," an official spokesman said.
The announcement came hours after the state counsel told the Allahabad High Court, hearing a plea for handing over the two cases to the CBI, that there was no need for transferring the case to the agency as the chargesheet has already been filed.
The High Court asked the UP government to submit to it the chargesheet and the case diary along with the entire records related to the murder of the two CMOs.
The spokesman said that the decision was taken to find out if there is any connection between the death of Sachan, and murder of Arya and Singh.
Arrested on charges of financial irregularities, Sachan, 52, was found dead inside the toilet of Lucknow district jail hospital on the night of June 22. The case was handed over to the CBI on July 13 by the state government after a judicial probe found it to be prima facie a case of murder.
The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court too ordered a CBI inquiry into the case the next day.
Sachan had been named as the key conspirator in the murder BP Singh in April following the arrest of three shooters hired to kill him.
The spokesman said that the government has also decided to hand over further investigation into FIR lodged in connection with financial irregularities in the office of CMO (family welfare) to the CBI.
"Investigation into FIRs lodged on April 5 and 7 has been handed over to the CBI with the intention that truth should come to fore whether Sachan's death has any connection with these financial irregularities," he said.
He said that a letter has been sent to the CBI in connection with the decisions taken by the state government.
"Though chargesheets have been filed in all the four cases after police investigation, but further investigation has been transferred to the CBI with the intention that if the motive behind Sachan's death is related to these cases then it is revealed and names of all those involved in Deputy CMO murder case are exposed," the spokesman said.
He said that one of the objectives behind CBI inquiry was to check recurrence of such incidents.
"The government is fully cooperating with the CBI in Sachan's case and all the related documents have been provided to the agency," the spokesman said.
While Arya was shot dead in October last year when he had gone for a morning walk, BP Singh was killed in a similar manner on April 2.
Immediately after Singh's murder, a case of financial irregularities was lodged and Sachan was arrested along with other staff.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Lucknow bench of the court comprising justices Pradeep Kant and Ritu Raj Awasthi directed the state government to submit the records of the CMO murder cases on July 22.
Appearing on behalf of the petitioner, counsel Prince Lenin submitted that Sachan was held accused in the murder of two CMOs and his death is already being probed by the CBI.
The petitioner counsel said that as all the cases were co-linked it would be appropriate to hand over the investigation into the murder case of chief medical officers, family welfare to the agency as well.
The government counsel, however, submitted that as the investigation into both the cases was complete and chargesheets already filed there was no need for the CBI inquiry.