Executive engineer MK Gupta had made two calls to the police for help as the accused forced their way into his house and beat him to death on December 23.

Speaking to The Sunday Express after the shanti paath held for Gupta on Saturday, his wife Shashi, who was the only one at home in the GAIL colony in Auraiya with him that night, said the police attended the calls but never came.

“When those men were banging on our doors, my husband called the local police. Though the call was attended, there was no assurance of help. Very soon, the men had already broken the bolts of the door and entered the house,” says Shashi. The couple then locked themselves in the bedroom and Gupta made another call to the police. When the men broke into the bedroom too, Gupta pushed his wife into the bathroom. From inside she heard sounds of thrashing and her husband screaming and pleading, “Bhatia mujhe mat maaro... mujhe suspend kara do, barkhast kara do...(Bhatia, don’t kill me, get me suspended, get me dismissed).” Shashi says he also kept pleading to someone called Tyagi.

She rubbished the government claim that the murder was a fallout of “departmental rivalry” and said she was sure Tyagi and Bhatia were not PWD engineers. “Had they been from the same field, I would have heard their names before,” she said.

Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party state president Shivpal Singh Yadav says “Bhatia” is BSP district president Yogendra Kumar Dohrey. “The entire area knows him as Bhatia but the police are waiting for him to escape before initiating any action.”

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