‘Fasting Swami was poisoned’

Ascetic Swami Nigamanand (34), who undertook an around four-month long fast to protest illegal quarrying in Haridwar, died on June 13 after allegedly being injected with poison, suspects the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

Ascetic Swami Nigamanand (34), who undertook an around four-month long fast to protest illegal quarrying in Haridwar, died on June 13 after allegedly being injected with poison, suspects the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). This is believed to be a conspiracy between the owner of a local quarry firm and a top district hospital official.

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The CBI on Thursday lodged a FIR in the case and charged two people — Gyanesh Kumar, owner of Himalayan Stone Crushers and Haridwar district hospital’s then chief medical superintendent Dr PK Bhatnagar — with murder and criminal conspiracy. The FIR alleged that Nigamanand was “injected” with an unspecified poison — believed to be organophosphate insecticide — at the Haridwar government district hospital by a female paramedic after the district administration had admitted him there on
April 27.

The condition of Nigamanand, who went on an indefinite fast on February 19, deteriorated thereafter and he did not survive. The CBI might exhume Nigamanand’s body to confirm the suspicion of poisoning.

According to the FIR, which is based on the complaint of Nigamanand’s associate Brahmachari Dayanand, Kumar allegedly targeted Nigamanand since he “came in the way of “ the former’s “business interests.”

The quarry firm was involved in mining and crushing of boulders on river Ganges’s banks near Haridwar. The local police had not registered a case despite Dayanand’s complaint on May 15, said a CBI source.