Five suspended jail officers were booked on charges of criminal conspiracy and destroying evidence in connection with the alleged kidnapping and torture of Lucknow-based businessman Mohit Jaiswal inside the barrack of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his aides in Deoria on December 26 last year. Advertising A former Samajwadi Party MP and five-time MLA from Allahabad West, Ahmed is contesting the Lok Sabha election from Varanasi as an Independent. He is lodged in Naini jail in Prayagraj to where he was transferred after the case came to light. The five jail officers are then jail superintendent Dileep Kumar Pandey, jailor Mukesh Kumar Katiyar, deputy jailor Dev Nath Yadav, and wardens Munna Pandey and Rakesh Kumar Sharma, said Yadvendra Pal, SHO of City Kotwali police station, Deoria. All of them were posted at Deoria district jail. Pal said the case against the officers was lodged under IPC sections II9 (public servant concealing design to commit offence which it is his duty to prevent), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), along with the relevant sections of the Prisons Act. Advertising On April 23, the Supreme Court had ordered police to file an FIR against five jail officers and supend them. It had also directed the UP government to transfer Ahmed to Gujarat from Naini jail, which is yet to happen. Kailash Pati Tripathi, Deoria district jail superintendent who is a complainant in the case, said two fact-finding reports by the district magistrate and the UP prisons department had been submitted to the state government. “Inquiry teams had found CCTV footage of the incident deleted,” said Tripathi. The Lucknow Police filed a chargesheet against eight people, including Ahmed. His son Umar, an accused in the case, is absconding. The case is yet to be handed over to the CBI. The businessman, Mohit Jaiswal, had alleged that Ahmed’s aides kidnapped him from Lucknow and took him to Deoria jail where he was thrashed in gangster’s presence and forced to sign documents of property worth Rs 48 crore in favour of his associates. Ahmed has been lodged in jail since February, 2017 after being booked for allegedly assaulting the faculty of an agriculture institute in Allahabad in 2016. He was transferred from Naini jail to Deoria jail on administrative ground in April last year. He has at least 70 cases against him and is facing murder charge in the murder of BSP MLA Raju Pal in 2005. He had unsuccessfully contested Lok Sabha bypoll from Phulpur as an independent last year.

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