Explained: The story of the 2011 custody death of Dr Y S Sachan, which a UP court says was ‘prima facie murder’

The Uttar Pradesh government, then led by Mayawati, had claimed Dr Sachan had died by suicide.

How did Dr Sachan end up in jail?

In 2011, the UP Police arrested Dr Sachan for alleged financial irregularities in the state Health and Family Welfare Department. He was accused in the multi-crore National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds embezzlement case, in which thousands of crores disbursed to states to provide accessible, affordable, and quality healthcare to the rural population, were allegedly siphoned off.

The alleged financial irregularities surfaced during police investigations into the sensational back-to-back murders of two CMOs, Dr Vinod Kumar Arya and Dr B P Singh, by motorcycle-borne killers in broad daylight in Lucknow.

CBI officials at the office of Dr Y S Sachan in 2011. (Express Archive)

Dr Arya, who was then CMO, Family Welfare, Lucknow, was shot dead on October 27, 2010, while he was on a morning walk near his home in the Vikas Nagar area. Less than six months later, on April 2, 2011, Dr Arya’s successor, Dr B P Singh, was killed in an almost identical incident near his home in Gomti Nagar.

That same month, Dr Rajendra Singh, then director (administration) in the Family Welfare Department, filed two cases at Lucknow’s Wazirganj police station, alleging financial irregularities in the Department. Dr Sachan was named in both the cases.

What happened after the arrest?

Dr Sachan was lodged in Lucknow district jail. On June 22, 2011, jail staff recovered the body of Dr Sachan inside an unlit first floor toilet of the jail. The body bore eight deep cuts on the neck, elbows, wrists, and thighs. There was a belt around his neck, the other end of which was tied to a rod of the toilet ventilator.

The body of Dr Sachan was found a day before he was scheduled to appear in court in connection with the NRHM scam case. A purported suicide note was recovered from his belongings.

The state government had then claimed that Dr Sachan died by suicide. His family, however, alleged that he was killed in order to prevent him from naming those who had framed him in false cases.

Four days after Dr Sachan’s death, his wife, Malti Sachan, filed a case against unidentified persons at Gosaiganj police station in Lucknow on charges of murder and criminal conspiracy.

What did the investigation find?

Rajesh Upadhyay, then Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) of Lucknow, conducted an inquiry into the death of Dr Sachan. On July 11, 2011, the CJM submitted the report before the Allahabad High Court, which was hearing a petition demanding an investigation by the CBI into Dr Sachan’s death.

The judicial inquiry concluded the death was “homicide”, contradicting the UP government’s suicide theory. The conclusion was based on findings of the autopsy, expert opinion on the nature of the victim’s wounds, circumstantial evidence, and the statement of witnesses. The report said it was a matter of investigation to find out who was responsible for the death.

How did the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) come into the picture?

Following a directive of the Allahabad High Court, the investigation was transferred to the CBI on July 14, 2011. The investigations into the murders of CMOs Dr Vinod Kumar Arya and Dr BP Singh, as well as the alleged NRHM scam, too were handed over to the CBI.

On September 27, 2012, CBI filed a closure report in its investigation into the murder case, saying that Dr Sachan had died by suicide by hanging, and was not murdered as his family had alleged. The CBI claimed that a board of doctors from AIIMS, New Delhi had concluded that Sachan’s death was caused by ante mortem hanging, associated with multiple suicidal wounds, and that there was no evidence for homicide.

The CBI said that Dr Sachan had ended his life as he was depressed, and felt helpless after the Special Task Force (STF) of the UP Police named him as a key conspirator in the murders of CMOs Dr Vinod Kumar Arya and Dr B P Singh.

What happened after the CBI’s closure report?

Dr Sachan’s wife Malti Sachan filed a protest application, and requested the court to reject the closure report and order further investigation into the case. Malti Sachan said the agency had placed a strong reliance on the AIIMS doctors who had prepared their report merely by perusing photographs and video footage. It had ignored the report of the post mortem examination, which was prepared by a panel of five doctors who had examined the body.

Malti Sachan also said that being a doctor, her husband knew very well which vital vein/ artery he had to injure in order to bring about death in the shortest possible time, and he would not have gone about inflicting multiple random wounds on himself if he was indeed trying to die by suicide.

The court allowed Malti’s protest application, and ordered the CBI to probe the case further. But on August 9, 2017, the CBI again filed a closure report in the murder case. Malti Sachan too moved the court again, and filed another protest application.

How did the case proceed after that?

On the basis of the second protest application, a local court in Lucknow registered the matter as a complaint case on November 19, 2019, Malti Sachan’s lawyer said. The court recorded the statements of Malti Sachan and others, including the doctors who had carried out the post mortem examination, and went through documents, including the autopsy report submitted by Malti Sachan.

On July 7 this year, the court ordered that prima facie it appeared that seven persons whom Malti Sachan had blamed, were responsible for violation of IPC sections 302 (murder) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy), her lawyer said. The court issued summons to those seven persons, and asked them to appear before it on the next date of hearing, August 8.

The seven summoned individuals are: then UP DGP Karamveer Singh, then Additional DGP (Prisons) V K Gupta, then Inspector General (Lucknow zone) Subesh Kumar Singh, then jailor of Lucknow district jail B S Mukund, then deputy jailor Sunil Kumar Singh, then chief warder Babu Ram Dubey, and then warder Pahendra Singh.

What has happened in the investigation of the murders of CMOs Dr Vinod Kumar Arya and Dr B P Singh?

The Lucknow Police initially booked five persons in the death of Dr Arya. The investigation was later transferred to the UP Police STF, which arrested one Anand Prakash Tiwari, one Ram Krishna Verma, and one Vinod Sharma.

On the directive of the court, the CBI investigated the case and filed a chargesheet against Tiwari, Verma, and Sharma. The agency gave a clean chit to some other persons booked by Lucknow Police, and did not file a chargesheet against former CMO A K Shukla, who too was arrested in the murders case and for the alleged financial irregularities.

The CBI said that the investigation revealed that the motive behind the murders of Dr Arya and Dr Singh was the fear of being exposed in the misappropriation of NRHM funds.