Petitioner urges Supreme Court to take action against ‘Top’ UP officers

NEW DELHI: The Uttar Pradesh Police recently told the Supreme Court that it was, at one stage, probing whether four top bureaucrats and police officers along with some political dignitaries hatched a conspiracy to falsely implicate a social activist when Mayawati ruled the state.

In its final report, accepted by the Akhilesh Yadav government in the state, however, the UP Police did not mention these top officials, a Supreme Court bench observed during a hearing last week.

UP Police had arrested Sanjeev Awasthi — one of the petitioners against Mayawati in the Taj Corridor scam case — in a fake currency case in 2011 when Mayawati was the chief minister.

The Akhilesh Yadav government termed the case a sham and told the court that it was withdrawing the charge sheet submitted earlier against Awasthi and was instead prosecuting 11 junior policemen for implicating him.

At its hearing on February 11, the bench noted that in a report submitted before it on August 12 last year, the UP Police had made certain remarks against certain high officials working in the state government.

“In the words of the investigating officer, the role of the criminal liability of Navneet Sehgal, secretary to chief minister, Kunwar Fateh Bahadur Singh, principal secretary (home), Karam Veer Singh, then UP DGP, Vijay Kumar, then IG Kanpur, and some political dignitaries at whose instance this conspiracy might have been hatched required further investigation,” the bench said.

In its final report submitted on October 17 last year, however, the UP Police made no reference to the role of the aforesaid officers, the court said.

Senior lawyer Shanti Bhushan, who appeared for Awasthi, said the court should act against those officers.

The SC bench said this contention appealed to it, but it cannot concede to the request.