Tripathi performed yagna to make Maya PM

Tripathi claimed he had sought no BSP aid for the yagna. “I have never been a member of BSP or any other party,and the case against Amar Singh is not politically motivated,” he added.

Local BSP leaders said they had never heard about Tripathi until he shot into the limelight last week. “I have never seen him,or met him,” said Salim Ahmed,BSP leader in charge of Kanpur Lok Sabha constituency. Similar was the reaction of Sukhda Mishra,the BSP’s Lok Sabha candidate.

In 1994-95,Tripathi was associated with Congress MLC Jagendra Swaroop,but his association with the Congress was short-lived. Swaroop said he removed Tripathi when he started getting complaints of misuse of his local area development fund.

Sources in the state government said the registration of the FIR on the night of October 15 took top officials at the police headquarters and in the Chief Minister’s Office by surprise.

“We first heard of it when the media started making inquiries”,said a senior officer.

When the police brass tried to verify the reports,they found that even Kanpur IG G L Meena and DIG Neera Rawat were unaware,the officer said.

“On checking,we got to know that the matter had nothing to do with Kanpur,but we were faced with a fait accompli,” the officer said. Sources said the government officials were trying to find out how such a case was registered in Kanpur,keeping senior officers in the dark.

Sources also find it difficult to believe that Tripathi could have collected the documents he has submitted with the FIR on his own.

Union Minister of State for Coal Sriprakash Jaiswal,who belongs to Kanpur,said: “Hours before the case was registered,Station Officer Dinesh Tripathi was transferred from Pheelkhana police station to Babupurva.” Also,immediately after the case was registered,Shiv Kant Tripathi was provided police security. “I have no right to give a clean chit to Amar Singh or the others named in the case,but the way in which the case was registered at Babupurva police station was mysterious,” Jaiswal added.

Tripathi belongs to Nivada village under Shivrajpur police station of Kanpur. Owner of Saryu Prasad Memorial Higher Secondary School in Shyam Nagar,Tripathi says he is a priest and spends lot of time in puja.