Engineer sought protection a year ago,cops sat on his request

Bihar PWD executive engineer Yogendra Pandey who died after an alleged fall from the third floor roof of the Sitamarhi...

Bihar PWD executive engineer Yogendra Pandey who died after an alleged fall from the third floor roof of the Sitamarhi district Collectorate building on 18 June was under threat from crooked road construction contractors,and had asked the police for protection over a year ago,in May 2008.

But the district police sat over the request until three days before Pandeys death. And even after security cover was sanctioned,no policeman was actually deployed to protect the engineer.

Police allowed Pandeys request on June 15,nine days after he was assaulted at home,allegedly by a man called Kishore Singh,the contract of whose company,Vats Construction,the engineer had junked after it failed to build a 40-km stretch of road by the stipulated deadline.

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Pandey,known to be an upright and uncompromising officer,took action against Singh on June 6; he was beaten the same evening. As reported in The Indian Express on Monday,Singh was arrested,but got bail,allegedly under dubious circumstances,on June 8.

Investigations by The Express show Pandey wrote to the Sitamarhi SP on May 26,2008 (letter number 1282) seeking police cover after he was threatened by some contractors who wanted their bills cleared without proper measurement and inspection of the roads they had built.

On August 27,2008,the deputy secretary of the road construction department instructed the Sitamarhi DM to immediately provide security to the engineer. But the district police did

not respond.

The sanction finally came after Pandey was actually assaulted,and the alleged attacker got bail using,as SP Chhatranil Singh told The Express,his big legal connections.

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However,the police protection remained on paper alone. No policeman was actually put in charge of the engineers security,because he never came to claim it,Chhatranil Singh said.

The SP denied knowledge of the fact that Pandey had asked for protection over a year ago even though he had been in the post even then. I have no idea about the letter (that Pandey wrote in May 2008), Chhatranil Singh said.

Asked how this could be possible when the letter had been addressed to him,and there had been follow-up action on it from the state road construction department,Singh said: I am not able to speak much on the matter at this stage of the investigation. Let Tirhut Range DIG B Srinivasan come out with his supervision note,things will get clearer.

The SP said the police were still treating Pandeys death as suicide. When told that the second post mortem and the forensic team from Patna had found enough evidence of murder,Singh said the matter was with the DIG.

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Kishore Singh has,meanwhile,gone underground since Pandeys death. Two of his henchmen named in the FIR for beating Pandey on June 6 Rajesh Singh and Rajiv Singh have been absconding since that day.

Amit Singh,a contractor with the firm Rajendra Singh and Brothers,whose contract,as reported in The Express on Monday,Pandey was about to cancel on grounds of shoddy and incomplete work,too also gone underground.

Over 400 engineers of the Bihar Engineering Services Association (BESA) have refused to come to work after the incident. BESA will go on indefinite strike from 25 June. Association general secretary Rajeshwar Mishra said: The state government wants engineers to deliver the best results without giving them adequate protection.

Mishra demanded a probe into the Sitamarhi SPs lackadaisical approach towards providing security to Pandey. BESA wants a murder case registered,immediate arrests and blacklisting of dubious companies.