LUCKNOW: In an 11-year-old case of the brutal lynching of a police officer in the rank of Deputy Superintendent of Police in Kunda assembly segment of Pratapgarh, the special CBI court of Lucknow awarded life sentence to 10 persons who were held guilty on October 4.
While delivering the quantum of punishment, Special CBI judge Dhirendra Kumar slapped the penalty of Rs 19,500 on each convict. Thus the total Rs 1.95 lakh penalty amount would be collected and half of it would be given to the widow of DySP Ziaul Haq who was the then CO, Kunda, on March 2, 2013, and was lynched and later shot when he reached a site of unrest following the murder of a village pradhan.
Those convicted by a special CBI court last Friday included Phoolchand Yadav, Pawan Yadav, Manjeet Yadav, Ghanshyam Saroj, Ram Lakhan Gautam, Chhotelal Yadav, Ram Asre, Munnalal Patel, Shivram Pasi, and Jagat Bahadur Pal alias Bulle Pal.
The case had kicked up much heat and dust as it had the sitting Kunda MLA and Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik)chief and then minister in SP govt Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bahiyya as the named accused. However, the CBI had given him the clean chit later.
All the convicts were presented in the court during the deliverance of the quantum of punishment. All were sent to jail after the pronouncement of the verdict. Special CBI judge Dhirendra Kumar had convicted 10 accused after finding them guilty under several sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including Sections 302 (murder), 149 (unlawful assembly), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), and 353 (assault on public servant).
As per Special Public Prosecutor KP Singh, the CBI had filed an FIR in the case in 2013 and the chargesheet in June of the same year. “Overall 12 persons were chargesheeted in the case. The list included Babloo Yadav, the son of village Pradhan Nanhe Yadav whose murder had triggered the unrest. Babloo also died during the trial of the case while another Sudhir Yadav was exonerated for want of evidence,” he said. Singh added that overall 32 witnesses were produced before the court during the trial.
According to Singh, the investigation revealed that after the murder of village pradhan Nanhe Singh Yadav in Balipur village on March 1, 2013, a large number of his supporters took to the streets brandishing weapons. There was so much chaos in the village that Kunda's Kotwal Sarvesh Mishra could not dare to go towards Yadav's house with his team. Then CO Ziaul Haq moved towards Pradhan's house from another route.
It is said that the villagers were firing. Fearing the firing, gunner Imran and SSI, Kunda, Vinay Kumar Singh, deployed in CO’s security, hid in the field. As soon as Haq reached the village, the villagers surrounded him and allegedly lynched him.
When CBI took over the case, it registered separate cases for the murder of three persons -- Ziaul Haq, Nanhe Yadav and his brother Suresh Yadav. The fourth FIR was registered by Parveen Azad, the wife of Ziaul Haq and she had named Raja Bhaiyya as an accused in the case.
