“The local MLA, Guddu Pandit, has threatened to eliminate me if I don’t give admission to the students he has recommended,” he said. Gupta said Shri Bhagwan Verma alias Guddu Pandit had called him and asked him to “reserve seats” for some students.

Less than a month later, on November 22, three men stabbed Gupta to death in the college premises.

The killers were never identified and the BSP MLA, who was arrested last week in an abduction case, was never even questioned.

Pandit may be in jail but fear still stalks Gupta’s family. The threat calls never stopped though the family moved to Noida.

Scared of “revealing anything controversial,” his son Sandeep Gupta said he was least interested in getting to the culprits now. “He (the culprit) is a powerful politician and threats have come in often,” he said.

Sandeep said his mother was not in a condition to speak as she had been “angered by the neglect of the authorities.” “She reacts angrily whenever you talk about him, nobody has cared to look at realities behind his death and nobody has cared to consult us. We are living a life of anonymity now,” said Sandeep who just joined back work after a long leave to look after his mother.

While the Bulandshahr police rounded up students from the college, the threats by Pandit were ignored. Police officers said the case could not be solved because of “lack of evidence” even though there were possibilities of direct “involvement of the minister.”

Raj Kumar, the Senior Superintendent of Police, said, “We had rounded up some students who had been rusticated by Gupta and questioned them but none of them were found involved.”

Most of the teachers at the college are hesitant to talk about the murder and the MLA’s threats. Rajendra Singh, appointed Principal after Gupta’s death, said, “I gave up the job within two months because of the involvement of politicians.”

Anil Kumar Garg, secretary of the college, said senior teachers had been shying away from the post. “Nobody wants to get into controversy after the incident last year.” Teachers said they faced problems from the politician for long but never from any of the students.

Shivkant Yadav, the present Principal and a junior lecturer, said, “There are occasional arguments with some student leaders but these are restricted to relevant issues; it is hard to believe that a student could have done such a thing.”

The BSP MLA was arrested on Sunday for allegedly “abducting” a woman television reporter Sheetal Birla. Pandit was shown as having been taken into custody from Shashikant Marg in Noida’s Sector-53 after Chief Minister Mayawati summoned him to her residence.

Sheetal’s father Dinesh Chand Birla had alleged that the legislator had married his daughter despite having a wife and two children.