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Madhya Pradesh RTI activist’s drive against graft led to his death: Cops
RTI activist Mukesh Dube had levelled corruption charges against a sarpanch Upasana Singh. Singh’s son and two others have been arrested in this connection.
The brutal murder of right to information (RTI) activist Mukesh Dube in Morena on Tuesday was due to his work as a crusader against corruption, said SP Aditya Pratap Singh, while announcing that three people were arrested in this connection.
“We have arrested Vikram Singh Gujar, 25, his uncle Bharat Singh Gujar, 52, and cousin Yogesh Gujar, 27,” Singh said on Wednesday, adding that further investigations were on and more arrests were likely.
Vikram Singh is the son of Sumawali sarpanch Upasana Singh, against whom Dube had levelled corruption charges. The incident led to the suspension of the panchayat secretary and recently, the district collector started the process to dismiss Upasana from the post of sarpanch.
The superintendent of police said the accused had confessed to their crime and said they were angry with Dube because he had ruined their family’s reputation.
They admitted that they came to his house in Vikram Nagar area on Monday night but he was not there.
Soon, they traced him to a nearby petrol pump from where they abducted him, took him to Matkora and beat him to death.
Sources said police were also investigating the role of Upasana and her husband Manoj Gurjar in the murder.
Manoj is untraceable for the past two days, leading police to suspect that he may have been aware of the plan to kill Dube and left the area to avoid getting embroiled in the case.
Manoj and his supporters had beaten up Dube a few days ago because of which he suffered head injuries.
A case was registered against Manoj and is now pending before the court.
Right to information activist Ajay Dubey said even though police had solved the case, they had to disclose that Dube was murdered as he had exposed that the sarpanch and other members of the family were involved in illegal mining.
“He had sent me papers that proved several people in positions of power were involved in illegal mining in the area. We are sending a memorandum to higher authorities, demanding that this aspect also be probed,” Dubey said.
