Adityanath's critic arrested on charge of abetting suicide

The retired IPS officer had accused the chief minister of promoting corruption and threatened to contest next year’s election against him

Thakur after his arrest.: Naeem Ansari

Piyush Srivastava   |   TT  |  Lucknow   |   28.08.21 : A retired IPS officer who had accused chief minister Yogi Adityanath of promoting corruption and threatened to contest next year’s election against him was on Friday arrested on the charge of abetting the suicide of a rape complainant.

Amitabh Thakur, an outspoken former inspector-general who had angered several chief ministers and administrations and was sent to forced retirement in March this year, alleged a conspiracy by Adityanath.

“Adityanath may have hatched a conspiracy to kill me. This could be the reason for my arrest. The cops thrashed me at the police station,” he told reporters at Hazratganj police station.

The police said Thakur had been arrested on the basis of a special investigation team (SIT) report on the suicide of a 24-year-old rape complainant from Ghazipur who had, before immolating herself outside the Supreme Court, implicated the officer on Facebook.

Two months ago, Thakur had told reporters that Adityanath's government was promoting corruption and anarchy.

“I shall contest and defeat the failed chief minister of Uttar Pradesh from wherever he contests,” the 53-year-old Lucknow resident had declared.

The Ghazipur woman had accused Bahujan Samaj Party MP Atul Rai of raping her in 2019. She and a male friend set themselves on fire in front of the Supreme Court in New Delhi on August 16, and both died during treatment.

Before the suicide, the woman had recorded a Facebook live video where she alleged that Rai and Thakur were pressuring her to withdraw the case.

Earlier in March, the woman had petitioned the Supreme Court requesting the case be shifted to Delhi and alleging Rai was intimidating her and her family. Rai, MP from Ghosi, has been in judicial custody in the case since 2019.

Khyati Garg, deputy commissioner of police, Lucknow central, said the SIT inquiry had found that “Atul Rai and Amitabh Thakur were prima facie guilty of abetting the suicide of the woman and her friend”.

She said Rai and Thakur had been booked for framing records and documents to cause injury, threatening a person to induce them to give false evidence, abetment to suicide, criminal intimidation, intentional insult and criminal conspiracy.

Garg did not explain what the “framing” charge was about. Police have said the Varanasi trial court had earlier in August booked the rape complainant and the male friend in a forgery case for furnishing false proof of age in the rape case, and issued non-bailable arrest warrants against them.

On Friday, Thakur told reporters outside the police station while being taken in: “In early November 2020, when I was still in service, I got a video clip in which the male friend of the woman was saying he would commit suicide if the woman didn’t get justice. I casually forwarded it to a police officer to see it and act to save him. Then the woman and the man came to my residence in Lucknow on November 20, 2020. They said they had wanted to talk to me but soon they started shouting at me, used foul words….

“So I registered a case against them at Gomti Nagar police station for threatening me and my wife. However, no action was initiated against them. This is all of my involvement in the case. But UP police are twisting the facts behind a video of the dead girl. There is no genuine case of abetting that stands against me.”

Thakur had been inspector-general and joint director, civil defence, in Lucknow when he was forced to retire in March, five years ahead of time.

The Union home ministry letter to Thakur said his services were “not useful in public interest” and he had been sent into “retirement before the completion of his service with immediate effect in the public interest”.

Thakur now works with his wife Nutan, a Right to Information activist. The couple have filed several cases with the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court alleging corruption at government offices.