New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh’s Brahmin Bahubali murder convict Amarmani Tripathi is free, but his two decades old case was a textbook example of trademark political pulls and pressures that come into play for VIP criminals. In the cast of characters were UP CM and BSP supremo Mayawati, upright IPS officers and an uncooperative telephone department that dragged its feet.
At the heart of the political string-pulling were two IPS officers — former UP DG (CB-CID)Mahendra Lalka and SP Amitabh Yash. They went through the rigmarole of suspensions and transfers.
Four-time UP MLA and cabinet minister in the 2002 Mayawati government, Amarmani Tripathi and his wife were charged with murdering the young and fiery poetess Madhumita Shukla on 9 May 2003. She was pregnant with his child when she was shot dead in Lucknow, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s constituency at that time.
It was a sensational case that immediately grabbed the national headlines. There was high drama in the police investigations too.
The local police, especially SHO Ajay Kumar Chaturvedi, did an exemplary job of securing the evidence from the victim. But both the BJP and BSP were trying to protect Tripathi, and Chaturvedi was conveniently relieved of his charge.
But it didn’t end there. Mayawati took the case away from the local police and made the grand gesture of bringing it under the CB-CID, which was the state’s special investigation unit. She set a strict deadline of 30 days.
Vague excuses were found to rattle the police officers, recalled a source in the team. On the 30th day, a senior official called one of the police officers and asked a bizarre question: Tell me the names of all the members of the team. The police officer didn’t remember the full name of one member.
“You didn’t remember the full names of all the officers in the investigating team,” — this was the reason for suspension given to the officer by a senior government official.
That day, 17 June, Mayawati suspended Lalka and Yash and transferred five junior officers. Then she transferred the case to the CBI.
On the face of it, the reasons given were delayed investigation. “The agency neither submitted its report nor sought an extension. We have taken it very seriously,” said Mayawati at that time.
This set off unrest among the IAS and the IPS cadres in the state and they made their displeasure known to the government. “The CB-CID was given 30 days to complete the investigation. The suspensions came after the 30 day period. My suspension was revoked and all charges were dropped within 40 days, One cannot bind an agency to complete a complicated probe in 30 days. Resources in the CB-CID were limited” Amitabh Yash, who is now ADGP, Special Task Force said.
Yash was reinstated as SP Human Rights. Lalka’s reinstatement took a little more time.
Also Read: Who was the SHO key in convicting Amarmani Tripathi? He protected the secret diary, witness
Political protection
Tripathi, who had various cases against him, was then a political henchman with career spanning 20 years. He had associations with the Congress, Samajwadi Party, BSP and BJP and was once one of the biggest and most influential Brahmin faces for the Purvanchal region of UP. In 2002, he was a minister in the Mayawati government backed by the BJP. Amarnani was also a minister in the BJP governments led by Kalyan Singh in 1997, Ram Prakash Gupta in 1999 and Rajnath Singh in 2000.
Despite the evidence — the poet’s diary found on the first day of investigation— strongly suggesting Amarmani and Madhumita’s relationship and the motive for the murder, the investigating teams had to tackle multiple elements. On the surface, it looked like there was pressure on the probe to be expedited, underneath, there was, counter-pressure to not name Amarmani and his wife as accused, and to remove and not focus on key evidence.
“Amarmani’s political backing and the power play of politics came like a slap on the faces of the police force. Since the beginning, the investigating teams were forced to look lost in spite of [the presence of] evidence since day one,” a police source said. Lalka (now retired) declined to comment on his suspension.
The entire matter and the manner in which it was handled by the UP government demoralised the police force, which was already split between those who were trying their best to seal the probe and those who were succumbing to the political rulers.
“Getting even one call detail record was a task at that time. Telephone agencies would keep dodging in the name of paperwork and permissions,” said a police source familiar with the issue.
He said that the investigation was almost over two days before the 30-day deadline. The case files were ready, only the questioning of Amarmani Tripathi remained. But the distrust was so high that the team did not hand over the files to the government.
“Legally the investigating team didn’t have to submit anything to the government. The case diary and the files were to be a part of the chargesheet that would be prepared,” the source said.
He added that the government cannot set a tight deadline for the probe in complicated and sensitive cases – the 30 days were too short a period — and the chargesheet is always submitted only in the court. The government can, however, ask for an update in the case.
The findings pointed at Amarmani as the prime accused.
And that’s when the interrogation began, on the second last day of the deadline.
“The preliminary findings included technical as well as financial evidence that showed the relationship between Madhumita and Amarmani. Amarmani didn’t cooperate in the investigation,” ADGP Yash said.
At first, Amarmani was evasive and denied everything.
“Whatever we asked about his relationship with Madhumita, he kept denying. His lawyers had prepared him. To most of the queries, he said he had no idea. When we asked him about the call records, he pointed out that he has a lot of servants and people coming into the house so anyone could have made those calls,” said another source.
Investigators had also seized registers from the phone booths near Madhumita’s house. On the night before the killing, calls were made by the shooters from the phone booths to Tripathi’s residence.
But Amarmani broke when the investigators started asking him about the financial transactions.
“He was sitting in a white kurta pyjama, legs crossed, very confident that he wouldn’t break. When the team started listing out the financial transactions — a fridge worth Rs 8,000 in Madhumita’s house. A part of the money was paid in cheque and the rest in cash. The cheque was issued from an NGO associated with Amarmani. When we showed him the evidence and started tracing the financial transactions, he started sweating. Within the next five minutes, he was drenched in sweat,” the second source said.
Then the suspensions of Lalka and Yash occurred. The case files reached Mayawati’s office as well as the media by the end of June.
“The situation was panicky for all those who were trying to provide Amarmani a clean chit. They needed to pin the blame on somebody and the officers’ names were served on a plate,” the second source said.
No arrests were made by the local police and the CB-CID. The shooters had fled and the officers were busy trying to nail the motive behind the murder and establish the conspiracy angle. But both the CB-CID team and the local police had their conclusion — all the evidence pointed at Amarmani Tripathi.
The CBI finally arrested Amarmani in September 2003 and a charge sheet was filed against all the accused including his wife, two shooters and his cousin Rohit Chaturvedi in December that year.
While in jail, Amarmani won the 2007 UP assembly elections as an independent candidate. He was addressing a press conference when the CBI came to him with an arrest warrant.
“We were struggling to collect each and every piece of evidence, making journal entries with limited resources was quite a task, especially because hardly anybody wanted to cooperate with the investigation,” recalled the police officer, quoted above. “Multiple witnesses changed their statements, senior officers came under political pressures and indirect threats were routinely made to loosen the knot around Amarmani. A lot of documents and paperwork were stolen too. Only we knew the kind of pressure we were working under those days.”
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)