Kanpur: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday (July 24) suspended IPS officer Aparna Gupta and then Deputy SP Manoj Gupta for their questionable role in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of a lab technician Sanjeet Yadav. SHO Barra police station Ranjit Rai and Chowki in-charge Rajesh Kumar were suspended earlier for alleged dereliction of duty.
The government has asked senior IPS officer BP Jogdand to probe the case in which Sanjeet was kidnapped on June 22 and his family was asked by the police to pay a ransom of Rs 30 lakh on July 13.
The police said it has arrested five persons including two friends of the deceased, in the case. According to the police, the captors murdered Sanjeet on June 26-27 and dumped his body in the Pandu river.
The family claim that they received a ransom call from the abductors on June 29 who demanded a Rs 30 lakh ransom for the release of Sanjeet. They said that on July 13, they delivered a bag carrying Rs 30 lakh on railway tracks from a flyover in police’s presence and did whatever they were told to do by the kidnappers, but they did not free Yadav.
On the other hand, Circle Officer (Govind Nagar) Vikas Pandey on Friday said the claim of ransom of Rs 30 lakh paid to the abductors was not true but he confirmed that five people, including a woman, were arrested in connection with the case.
SSP (Kanpur) Dinesh Kumar Prabhu said that several key suspects were detained in connection with the case and grilled intensively, during which two of them confessed to the crime. He said the suspects initially tried to mislead the police, but later they disclosed that they kidnapped Sanjeet and killed him either on June 26 or June 27.
The police said that during an interrogation, one of the accused confessed that they disposed off Sanjeet’s body in Pandu river. According to the police, the accused had worked together earlier with Yadav in another pathology lab.
Several police teams, including crime branch and surveillance, have been directed to find the victim’s body and arrest all those involved in the crime.
Earlier, Opposition parties, including Congress and Samajwadi Party, had reacted sharply soon after the family came before the media and claimed that ransom was given to the kidnappers in the presence of the police. The parties claimed this incident was depictive of the dismal law and order in the state.