LUCKNOW: Devashish Singh, a rice mill owner in Uttar Pradesh’s Akbarpur district, was fed up of paying monthly bribes to Food and Civil Supplies Department officials. He complained to the Anti-Corruption Organisation (ACO) of the state police, which soon caught marketing inspector Arjun Kumar red-handed, with a bribe of Rs 7,000 in his pocket. Singh’s woes had, however, just begun.
Singh started getting threats —from local officials, goons and ruling party leaders, including MLAs—asking him to withdraw his complaint. He refused. Arjun Kumar, the marketing inspector, happened to be a Dalit, and Singh was charged and jailed under Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act. The marketing department got into the act too, slapping a series of cases under the Essential Commodities Act on Singh; he went to jail again, and his businesses closed down. The pleas of Singh’s wife have not even been heard. Even letters written by the Director General of the ACO haven’t been answered.
Devashish Singh could well be the unfortunate poster boy for the lawlessness that UP under Mayawati is slipping into. The dark irony is that Mayawati rode to power in 2007 on the promise of ridding the state of corruption, goonda raj and police atrocities inflicted upon the people by Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP). After taking over in May 2007, Mayawati’s first major act was to open special counters in every police station of the state for filing First Information Reports (FIRs) not registered in the Mulayam regime. That move is now widely seen as a ploy to implicate and intimidate SP workers.
The Nighasan incident in Lakhimpur Kheri town, where teenage girl Sonam is alleged to have been criminally assaulted and murdered by policemen who tried to portray her death as a suicide, has once again exposed the high-handedness that passes for law and order in the Mayawati regime. It is eerily similar to the death of Indian Justice Party Lok Sabha candidate Bahadur Sonkar, whose body was found hanging from a tree in Jaunpur district. Sonkar’s family had said it was murder, and accused BSP candidate Dhananjay Singh—charged in several criminal cases—of it. The demand for a CBI probe was ignored and the CID gave Dhananjay Singh a clean chit.
In the Sonam case too, the state again tried to suppress facts, refusing an FIR against the policemen. Three government doctors who did an autopsy on the minor’s body also ruled out murder to strengthen the police story. Public ire and an outraged opposition, however, forced the government to reopen the case. “It is unbelievable a state with a woman chief minister (CM) is insensitive to rape and murder of a minor girl by the police, with the policemen being protected instead,” says BJP spokeman Hridaya Narain Dixit. Mayawati has reluctantly agreed to recommend a CBI inquiry, though she hadn’t yet found time to visit the grieving family.
“When the postings of the District Magistrates and the Superintendents of Police are done for political considerations or weight of the briefcase, such results are inevitable. What is shocking is that instead of prompt action against the erring personnel, they were being protected,” says senior SP leader Om Prakash Singh.
Spurred by incidents like these, the erosion of the Mayawati government’s popular support is now picking up speed. The police firing on agitating farmers at Bhatta-Parsaul and the sensational killings of two senior medical officers—Vinod Kumar Arya in October last year and B P Singh in April—started the slide.
Mayawati seems to have lost her tough-on-crime image. In the past four years, about a dozen MLAs, including half a dozen ministers, have been found involved in rape, murder, kidnapping and land-grab. In most cases, Maya is perceived to have taken action after having tried her best to protect them. She also sent out shock waves by approving names of a dozen criminals for the Legislative Council. In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, she fielded notorious criminals like Mukhtar Ansari, Arun Kumar Shukla alias Anna and Dhananjay Singh. That the BSP didn’t do well was a clear message from voters. Mayawati didn’t get it.
The criminals and mafia dons elevated by Mayawati as MLCs, MPs and ministers are now turning into an albatross around the CM’s neck. Take the case of Intizaar Ahmed Abdi, an accused in the July 2009 arson at Congress leader Rita Bahuguna Joshi’s bungalow. Mayawati had soon after made Abdi chairman of the Ganna Sansthan, a position equivalent to minister of state. Now Abdi figures in a murder case.
The writing is on the wall. And elections are around the corner.