Amar Mani faces CBI murder rap

Former Uttar Pradesh Minister Amar Mani Tripathi and five others will be chargesheeted this week for the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla....

Former Uttar Pradesh Minister Amar Mani Tripathi and five others will be chargesheeted this week for the murder of poetess Madhumita Shukla.

Orders for the action were passed by the CBI headquarters today and the chargesheet is to be filed in a designated court in Lucknow in a day or two, before the 90 days remand period of the jailed Minister expires on December 21.

Along with Amar Mani, the names of his wife Madhumani Tripathi and his cousin, Rohit Chaturvedi, will figure in the CBI chargesheet. The other three accused of the crime are the two alleged 8216;8216;executors8217;8217; of the murder, Prakash Chander Pandey and Santosh Rai, as well as Yag Narain Dixit, the Sub-Inspector of Uttar Pradesh police who is being charged with destroying evidence before the CBI took charge of the case.

Besides Madhumani, who is being named as an absconding accused by the CBI, all the five accused are at present in Lucknow jail. Amar Mani was arrested by the CBI on September 21, after DNA tests clinched the issue of paternity of the victim8217;s foetus.

Besides forensic reports, the CBI will cite as evidence ballistic reports as well as records of telephone calls exchanged between the accused, diaries and letters written by Madhumita.

She was killed at her house located in the Paper Mill Colony in Lucknow on May 9, forcing former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati to ask her Cabinet Minister to resign.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More