The Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court on Tuesday reserved its verdict on a plea for a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the murder of jailed Lucknow deputy chief medical officer Dr Y S Sachan.
A division bench comprising senior judge Justice Pradeep Kant and Justice Ritu Raj Awasthi decided to reserve the judgment that would be delivered in the open court on Thursday.
The court remained packed throughout the day as speculation was rife that the petitioner's plea would be conceded. A battery of government counsels led by additional Advocate General Jaideep Mathur vehemently opposed the petition and went on insisting that the court could constitute a Special Investigation Team that could comprise of a CBI official too and have the investigation carried out under its own supervision.
Expressing its unwillingness to involve the high court in the investigation, the bench preferred to reserve the judgment.
An accused in the murder of his own superior, Sachan was found dead in mysterious circumstances inside a toilet of the high-security Lucknow district jail on the night of June 22.
Jail authorities and the local police promptly dismissed it as a case of suicide; amidst echoing demand by Sachan's family for a CBI inquiry as they insisted that it was "cold-blooded murder".
Vehemently opposed to a CBI probe, the state government ordered a judicial inquiry that was entrusted to Lucknow Chief Judicial Magistrate Rajesh Upadhaya . The CJM submitted his report as a one-man judicial commission to the state government late Monday night confirming 'homicide' (murder) as the cause Sachan's death, while dismissing the police theory of suicide.
The 76- page exhaustive report completed by the CJM over a brief span of just 18 days, pointedly blames the jail authorities for the murder, which was engineered largely because Sachan was expected to spill the beans on the financial irregularities that would have put several high and mighty in the dock.
