CBI slaps murder charges on Raja Bhaiyya

Lucknow : The CBI Thursday named former Uttar Pradesh minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya as an accused in the murder of deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Zia-ul-Haq, based on the complaint of his widow Parveen Azad, as it filed four FIRs in the case, officials said.

This is in addition to the charges of criminal conspiracy, which the state police had slapped on Raja Bhaiyya last Sunday after Parveen alleged that the former minister, an Independent legislator from Kunda, had conspired to kill her husband.

Officials said that with the charges converted to murder under section 302 of the IPC, the arrest of Raja Bhaiyya was now imminent and the CBI team investigating the matter could interrogate him and then arrest him.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had late Wednesday night taken over the sensational case and Thursday began the probe into the killing of Haq and the Bilaspur village headman Nanhe Yadav and his brother Suresh Yadav.

Four others – Rohit Singh, Guddu Singh, Om Srivastava and Gulshan Yadav – have also been accused in the Haq murder case. Following his name figuring in the FIR filed by Parveen, Raja Bhaiyya had quit the one-year-old Akhilesh Yadav ministry.

While the chief minister has so far parried questions on the likelihood of the arrest of Raja Bhaiyya, he said the law will be allowed to take its own course and that since the CBI had been handed over the case, it was for the agency to act further.

Azad Thursday demanded that Raja Bhaiyya be arrested for his role in the killing of her husband. She also said that a bravery award should be given posthumously to her husband and that the place where he laid his life in line of duty should be renamed after him.