The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Thursday ordered a CBI inquiry into the mysterious death of former Deputy CMO Y S Sachan in the Lucknow jail last month. The court order came after the petitioners counsel argued that the state governments recommendation for a CBI probe,made on Wednesday,was no guarantee that the investigating agency will actually take up the case. The bench comprising Justices Pradeep Kant and Ritu Raj Awasthi passed the order on a PIL filed by a local journalist Sachidanad alias Sache. Additional Advocate General J N Mathur apprised the court about the state governments decision to refer the case to the CBI. To this,the petitioners lawyer Nadeem Murtaza said: We argued that only the court order would be binding on the CBI. Murtaza presented a list of 24 cases that were referred to the CBI by the state government since May 2005. The CBI refused to take up most of the cases. We also cited some examples in which the CBI did not even reply to the state governments recommendations, Murtaza said. Sachan was arrested in April for irregularities in the Family Welfare Department that surfaced during investigation into the murder of former CMO Dr B P Singh,who was gunned down by bikers when he was taking a morning walk near his residence in Lucknow. On June 17,the police said Sachan was behind Singhs murder. The police also claimed Sachan was linked to the murder of Singhs predecessor Vinod Arya,who was killed in a similar manner near his Vikas Nagar residence. On June 22,Dr Sachan was found dead in the Lucknow jail in suspicious circumstances. While the government claimed he committed suicide,his family alleged that he had been killed to protect some influential men who had framed him in false cases. A judicial inquiry,the report of which was presented to the high court,found Sachans death to be homicide.
