New Delhi: When a mother was being sedated to stop her from crying and falling sick after her 15-year-old boy was kidnapped, dreaded UP minister Amarmani Tripathi was giving shelter to the kidnappers. The case that saw the Bahubali minister’s arrest over two decades ago shook this family and highlighted what the power-drunk UP politician was capable of.
As he walked free last week despite conviction in the Madhumita Shukla murder case, ThePrint talked to this family that has carried the trauma for over two decades.
Rahul Medasiya, son of a businessman from UP’s Basti district, was kidnapped from outside his school on 5 December 2001 at 7:45 am. He was on his bicycle when the kidnappers approached him. At first, the boy resisted but had to give in once a gun was trained at his head. Six days later, he was rescued from Kothi no 14 in the cantonment area of Lucknow— Gagged, hands tied. The kothi was allegedly managed by Amarmani’s men.
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The crackdown
A call recording from the phones that were tapped by the police revealed Amarmani’s link with the kidnappers. The house belonged to an old aide of Amarmani Rajesh Agarwal and his brother Manoj had admitted that the kidnappers had been given shelter at the “behest” of the minister.
Even as Amarmani Tripathi and wife Madhumani are free, this 22-year-old case hangs in limbo. Neither Medasiya, now a Phd scholar, nor his family are interested. Today, they reluctantly talk about the case.
“We have moved on from the incident. It’s been stuck in the court forever. My brother doesn’t talk about it. We have continued with our lives,” Rahul’s elder brother Krishan Murari Medasiya says. At the time of the kidnapping, Krishan was 20 years old.
Amarmani Tripathi, an influential Brahmin face in Eastern UP, who had a political career spanning over 20 years and associations with the Congress, Samajwadi Party, BSP and BJP enjoyed massive patronage from the power corridors of Lucknow and outside. A year before Madhumita Shukla was killed, he was appointed as a minister in the Mayawati-led and BJP-backed government. In 1997, he served under Kalyan Singh, and later under Ram Prakash in 1999 and Rajnath Singh in 2000.
After his name figured in the kidnapping, Singh sacked Amarmani who was arrested in the case. But Amarmani’s political career didn’t take a dent.
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Amarmani: A nuisance for police
A student of Class 10, Rahul Medasiya had left home that day feeling uneasy. Barely 500 metres from his house, just when he was about to enter his school, five men shoved him in a car and took him away. For the next six days, police teams searched the surrounding areas but without success.
“Our mother had been given sedatives. She would wake up crying and then faint. We had no connections with anyone to seek help. However, the police teams did an exemplary job and Rahul came back home after seven days,” Krishan recalls.
The family isn’t waiting for any closure and they don’t care if Amarmani is punished. “It’s been over two decades since the kidnapping. We got the boy back. That was enough. We just want to live peacefully and continue with our lives,” he said.
“My brother did resist the kidnappers but what can a young boy do when a gun is flashed. That day, he didn’t want to go to school but our mother forced him to leave, which is why she could never forgive herself,” Krishan, who runs a kirana store in Basti said.
Sources in the UP Police familiar with the case say that while the calls for ransom were tapped by the Special Task Force on the very next day of the abduction, they didn’t make a move over fear that the kidnappers would panic and end up hurting the boy.
“The police teams had to be sure that the boy was with them at that location so they had to be really patient. Ransom calls for Rs 50 lakh were made. It was also in these calls that Amarmani Tripathi’s name was taken multiple times,” a police source says.
Officers knew that Amarmani Tripathi was involved but they needed concrete evidence. So after the boy was rescued and handed over to his parents, an STF officer and a senior city police officer went to CM Rajnath Singh with the recording.
“The chief minister (Rajnath) was shocked when the recording was played. He immediately asked his officer on duty to prepare for sacking Amarmani. While these two officers were there, another STF team was trailing the MLA with an arrest warrant,” another police source says.
For some UP Police officers, Amarmani Tripathi was an absolute nuisance at that time and his saga of crime kept running with indemnity.
Then SP Lucknow Rajesh Pandey says, “Amarmani Tripathi had created enough nuisance and was going unpunished. He had once also forcibly taken over a former RAW officer’s house in Hazratganj, near the SSP’s office. His impunity was reaching new heights every day. He had beaten up the helpers of the house, kept them locked in a different area and got an electricity connection in his name. When we went to the house, a verbal spat was triggered because Amarmani remained evasive and kept insisting that the bungalow, which was worth at least Rs 30 crore at that time, was his. We had to resort to force, beat up his men for them to leave the house”.
On the day that the STF and the local police stopped Amarmani Tripathi’s convoy to arrest him, the Bahubali politician and his men refused to comply with the officers. After persuasion failed, the officers had to take off their belts and shoes and start hitting Amarmani. Fearing it would become a public spectacle that could affect his image in the region, he gave up and sat inside the police jeep.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)