Lucknow, June 30 (IANS) Commencing the judicial probe into the alleged murder of jailed deputy chief medical officer Y.S. Sachan in the Lucknow district jail, chief judicial magistrate Rajesh Upadhaya Thursday castigated the jail superintendent and sought his explanation on the lapses that allowed the killing to take place inside the jail.
Vir Sen Mukund, who has been under cloud ever since his posting from Jaunpur to Lucknow barely two weeks before Sachan’s alleged murder, was grilled by the CJM for hours in his chamber, where he had been summoned to depose before him.
The CJM also questioned the jail superintendent on his alleged nexus with a mafia don-turned ruling Bahujan Samaj Party MP, whose involvement in the murder is being talked about.
‘How could such a crime take place in jail’ asked Upadhaya, who had earlier issued notice to the jail authorities to submit a long list of documents. Mukund was stated to have furnished the post-mortem report, a copy of the post-mortem videography together with list of all inmates of the jail at the time of the murder as also the names of each of the 60 inmates who were admitted to the prison hospital at that time.
CJM Upadhaya was stated to have taken serious note of the finding that one of the nine wounds detected on the slain doctor’s body was post-mortem, while the rest were ante-mortem.
He also reprimanded the jail superintendent on the sudden shutting of close-circuit cameras installed in different parts of the Lucknow district jail.
Apparently unsatisfied with Mukund’s replies,the CJM has now summoned his next in line – jailor J.P. Srivastava – on Friday. Srivastava was among the five jail officials to be suspended for their prima facie responsibility.
Sachan was found dead in mysterious circumstances inside a toilet of the jail hospital on June 10. While the state police initially tried to dismiss it as a case of suicide, mounting public pressure eventually compelled them to register it as a case of murder. He was key accused in the murder of his superior chief medical officer B.P. Singh,
who was gunned down close to his residence while he was on his routine morning walk on April 2.
Significantly, Singh’s predecessor Vinod Arya was also killed in exactly the same manner and shot by masked motor-cyclists in October 2010 during the course of his usual morning walk.
