Police detain 4 in CMO murder case

Uttar Pradesh police has detained four persons in connection with the murder of Chief Medical Officer of family welfare department B P Singh last month and seized weapons suspected to have used in the shooting.

"During investigation police and other agencies had narrowed down on some gangs which might have connection with the criminals, who eliminated CMO Singh," Director General of Police Karamveer Singh told mediapersons.

He said that on the basis of investigation, four persons, including Shachindra Singh-- a native of Gorakhpur, were detained on Tuesday night.

"On the basis of Shachindra's interrogation, two 7.65 pistols and cartridges have been recovered from Gomti Nagar area in Lucknow," the DGP said.

He said that the detained criminals revealed that Animesh Lala, Ashutosh Shukla, Tabrez, Sanjay Singh alias Pintu and Varun Singh were the other gang members. "This gang is mainly into fire-arms and has close association with a number of other criminal gangs," Singh said.

He said that Shachindra told the police that in second week of March, Sudhakar Pandey contacted Animesh Lala and asked him to arrange a weapon which he said would be used to execute a major crime in Lucknow.

"Shachindra said that Ashutosh provided him two 7.65 pistols and cartridges, which he kept in Lucknow and were recovered today," the DGP said. Sudhakar Pandey is suspected to be the main shooter in Singh's murder and the state government has announced a cash reward on his head.

The DGP said that to ascertain that the weapons recovered on Wednesday were used in the CMO murder it would be send to forensic science laboratory for testing. "As the dimension of the case is very vast involving several districts, problems are being faced in collecting evidence.

Our effort is to identify the shooter associated with the murder," he said. He said that during investigation a number of criminal groups have come to light which may be linked to the case.

The UP Police had earlier said that a large number of irregularities in implementation of the National Rural Health Mission had been detected in the Uttar Pradesh Family Welfare Department during investigation into the murder.