The officer, Manilal Patidar, has not yet been arrested. (Proceedings)
Lucknow:
A Uttar Pradesh businessman who had charged the currently suspended Indian Police Service officer Manilal Patidar with extortion was shot dead at a Kanpur hospital. He was found with a gunshot wound to the neck in his Audi car on a highway near the state’s Mahoba city earlier this month and had been fighting for his life in an intensive care unit.
Indrakant Tripathi, a prominent businessman involved in mining in Mahoba, 230 km from the capital Lucknow, had issued a video statement on social media earlier this month, accusing the IPS officer of the 2014 group Manilal Patidar of corruption. , threats and intimidation.
The businessman, who was involved in the extraction of explosives, had said that if he was going to die in any way, the officer should be blamed. The video had gone viral on social media.
Patidar, the former police chief of Mahoba, a mining center in the Bundelkhand state region, was suspended on corruption charges under Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, less than 24 hours after the businessman was hospitalized. A case of attempted murder and extortion was registered against him and two other police officers based on a complaint from the businessman’s family.
It is not clear to this day who shot the businessman or how he ended up with a bullet inside his car.
The officer has not yet been arrested.
“We want Patidar to be arrested. He is an influential person. He and his people can harm our family,” Tripathi’s brother told the media in Kanpur on Sunday.
Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav has criticized the UP government for the incident.
“The assassination of Indrakant Tripathi, who had exposed corruption in the Uttar Pradesh government, has shown that the government ‘thoko’ (shoot), bogus police encounters and bogus cases against opposition leaders have pushed the state into the abyss, “he tweeted in Hindi.
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