CBI’s Delhi unit to probe Dr Sachan’s death in jail

LUCKNOW: The probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the custodial death of deputy chief medical officer Dr Yogendra Singh Sachan hit a roadblock on Friday as the agency’s Lucknow unit abandoned the probe following directives from the headquarters that investigations have been transferred to the Delhi unit of the CBI.
It was however yet to be confirmed if the Delhi unit of the agency would start a fresh probe into the case or take it up from where their Lucknow counterparts have left, sources in the CBI said.Investigations so far have led the CBI sleuths to some forensic evidences strongly suggesting that Dr Sachan was murdered in cold blood and had not committed suicide as claimed by the Uttar Pradesh government on the basis of the statements of the jail authorities, a senior official said.
Dr Sachan’s family had however insisted that the deputy CMO was murdered to save some high and mighty in the government. The CBI team probing the case had already sent some forensic samples for confirmatory tests and was awaiting the reports from its lab in Delhi to conclusively deduce that Dr Sachan was murdered. “However the probe has been discontinued since Friday afternoon,” sources said.
Dr Sachan’s blood soaked body was recovered from a deserted spot inside Lucknow district jail under highly mysterious circumstances on June 22, 2011. Sachan was in jail in connection with some financial irregularities related to the National Rural Health Mission, when he was booked for the murder CMO Dr Vinod Arya and his successor Dr BP Singh. The two CMOs were shot dead in almost similar sequence of events within one month of their taking charge.
The two cold blooded murders that took place in a span of six months starting October 2010, had come as a major embarrassment for the Mayawati government.
Though Mayawati sacked the then minister for health Anant Mishra and family welfare minister Babu Singh Kushwaha following allegations that it was a power tussle between them that led to the murders, the controversy refuses to die. Eventually a Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court ordered a CBI probe into the two murders and the death of Dr Sachan following a public interest litigation along with the NRHM irregularities that took place in Lucknow.
While the case related to the murders of the two CMO and the custody death of Dr YS Sachan were being probed by CBI Lucknow, the one related to alleged NRHM bungling was being probed by the Delhi unit of the agency.
Earlier, the Lucknow and Delhi units associated with the three cases had themselves mooted the idea of transferring all the three cases to one of the two units to avoid duplication of work. It was on the basis of this demand that the headquarters finally ordered the cases to be probed by the Delhi unit of the agency, sources in the CBI said.