CBI says it’s got 2nd witness who saw Dubey being killed

Exactly a month after the murder of IIT graduate and National Highway Authority of India officer Satyendra Dubey, the CBI has in its custody...

Exactly a month after the murder of IIT graduate and National Highway Authority of India officer Satyendra Dubey, the CBI has in its custody a second eyewitness to the killing—an eyewitness, agency sources say, who had a ‘‘close view of the man who pulled the trigger.’’

The first eyewitness in the case was Pradeep Kumar, a Gaya rickshaw-puller, who was brought to Delhi for a two-day interrogation after which he was sent home. He is said to have been in a ‘‘agitated, frightened state of mind.’’

Sources told The Sunday Express that, from the ‘‘evidentiary point of view,’’ the second eyewitness could turn out to be more useful than the first. He has been promised protection and an assurance that his identity will not be revealed.

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All that officials indicate is that he could have been a resident of one of the slum clusters close to the spot where Dubey was murdered on November 27.

Sources in the CBI’s investigation team camping in Gaya said that they now have ‘‘significant leads’’ in the case. Already, Dubey’s staff and relatives have been questioned and officials say they will question NHAI officials only when they have established who killed Dubey.

As of now, investigators say, they aren’t ruling out any motive: revenge killing, a ‘‘supari killing’’ by the contractor mafia or even robbery.

After sending a six-member team to Gaya headed by a Superintendent of Police, senior CBI Dubey murder: Second witness

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officials are also likely to visit Gaya next week. Officials say that so many people have offered to make statements to the CBI on their interaction with Dubey, that another officer was being rushed to Gaya tomorrow to assist in the questioning.

The CBI is also questioning employees of the various contractor firms working on the project. As far as Dubey’s cellphone records go, agency officials say there isn’t much to them. Records show that he rarely used his mobile phone and the few calls logged in were either made to his house or office and some to his friends in Delhi.

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

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