SIT to probe Anurag Tewari’s death

Five-member team formed after family alleges IAS officer was murdered

Lucknow: File photo of Karnataka Cadre IAS officer Anurag Tewari who was found dead under mysterious conditions in Lucknow on Wednesday. PTI Photo by Nand Kumar (PTI5_17_2017_000133B)

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) will probe the death of 2007-batch Karnataka-cadre IAS officer Anurag Tewari, whose body was found on the road near a State guest house in Lucknow under mysterious conditions.

A five-member SIT headed by the Circle Officer of Hazratganj was constituted on Thursday. The SIT has been asked to submit its report within 72 hours, said Senior Superintendent of Police Deepak Kumar.

The order for a probe came amid claims by the 36-year-old officer’s family that he did not die of natural causes but was murdered because of his honesty. “Corrupt officers did not like him. They must have somehow got him murdered,” the IAS officer’s father B.N. Tewari told reporters in their native village in Bahraich district of U.P. The officer’s family told the police that he was not being allowed to leave Karnataka by his seniors despite his requests and applications. The police said they had not received an application from the family for registration of a case.

The police on Wednesday said that

prima facie it did not appear like murder but death due to “traumatic injury”. The post-mortem report has pointed to “asphyxia” as being the likely cause of death. A panel of four doctors conducted the post-mortem. The panel, however, did not state the exact cause as asphyxia and samples of the body have been sent to Forensic Science Laboratory for examination. “Viscera and blood preserved for chemical analysis and heart for histopathologic examination,” read the post-mortem report.

Meanwhile, the officer’s body was cremated at his native. Many bureaucrats were present.

The issue was raised in the U.P. Assembly for the second consecutive day, with Opposition parties alleging that the officer was murdered, and that it exposed the BJP government’s tall claims of good law and order situation.

While SP leader and Leader of the Opposition Ram Govind Chowdhury described the “murder” of the IAS officer in a high-profile area as a “serious matter,” Congress leaders demanded a CBI probe.

Mr. Tewari’s body was found by the road near the Meera Bai guest house in the heart of the city on Wednesday morning. Incidentally, it was also his 36th birthday.

Sources said Mr. Tewari had been suffering from depression for a while, especially after his separation from his wife.