Anuj’s family to approach Kalam

The family of Anuj Kumar Mishra, the IIT third year mechanical engineering student who is being projected as the husband of slain UP poet Ma...

The family of Anuj Kumar Mishra, the IIT third year mechanical engineering student who is being projected as the husband of slain UP poet Madhumita Shukla, has now decided to take its woes to President APJ Abdul Kalam.

‘‘We feel that in this situation where the state government hasn’t come to our rescue, the President is the only unbiased authority whom we can approach for justice. Anuj had nothing to do with Madhumita and yet his name is being dragged into the controversy,’’ Anuj’s maternal grandfather Jay Jay Prasad Mishra told The Indian Express on phone. He said he will write to the President soon.

Interestingly, if they are to be believed, Anuj has not contacted his family in Kanpur ever since he left for Singapore on May 17 for a job he got through campus recruitment despite the fact that he has yet to complete his graduation in Mechanical Engineering. The authorities at IIT, Kanpur are tightlipped about the episode.

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Police have reportedly raided Anuj’s hostel room and also his house at Azad Nagar locality in search of leads. Anuj has emerged as an important character in the mystery surrounding Madhumita’s murder with a priest, who is not traceable now, claiming before a section of media that he got the two married a few months back in the presence of the poet’s sister Nidhi.

Sources claim that the only link Anuj could have had with Madhumita was either an invitation from Student’s Cultural Cell at IIT (of which he was the president last year) or the fact that his father was posted in Lakhimpur, Madhumita’s native place.

Meanwhile, a CB-CID team has returned from Lakhimpur after recording statements of Madhumita’s sister, mother and neighbours.

Sources said the picture of suspected killer Satya Prakash, that had been prepared on computer, has also been rejected by Nidhi who claimed that Satya Prakash had visited them in Lucknow a day before Madhumita’s murder and she can easily recognise him. The state investigating agency officials admit on condition of anonymity that local police were slow in collecting evidence especially fingerprints from the site of the murder. ‘‘Fingerprints could have been a useful evidence but we could not get them because of the sluggish approach of the local police,’’ an official said.

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