Perils of honesty: In Uttar Pradesh, the mafia-politician nexus rules

Mumbai: When Karnataka IAS officer D.K. Ravi gasped for his last few breaths in Bengaluru, a fellow IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, now posted in Delhi, perhaps, felt the suffocation.

Durga Shakti — like Ravi —has suffered the pulls and pressures of the mafia-politician nexus. Unlike Ravi, though, she survived to fight another day.

Durga Shakti, a UP cadre officer, was suspended in July 2013 when she dared to take on the sand mafia in Gautam Buddha Nagar district. The UP government claimed that she had faced action because she had ordered demolition of a mosque wall.

A local Samajwadi Party leader Narendra Bhati was, however, caught on camera, bragging that he had got Durga suspended “in less than 40 minutes” because she had stalled his illegal mining operations.

The episode led to national outrage, invited the Centre’s intervention and media criticism, forcing the state government to finally revoke her suspension two months later. Durga and her husband Abhishek Singh, also an IAS officer, have since opted for a change of cadre and bid adieu to Uttar Pradesh.

Durga is not an isolated case in UP — a state firmly in the grip of the mafia-politician nexus. Business interests reign supreme and any officer who tries to go by the book faces a backlash — physical and psychological.

Senior IAS officer Harminder Raj Singh, who was principal secretary for housing and urban planning in the Mayawati regime, allegedly shot himself at his Lucknow residence in November 2009. His family members said that he was under tremendous pressure from his political bosses to go beyond the rules. His colleagues even pointed to the possibility of foul play, but the government brought the matter to a hurried close. His family fled from Lucknow within days of his death, but the mystery behind his death remains unsolved.

If that wasn’t shocking enough, consider this: A government engineer, Manoj Gupta, was lynched in his own house in Aurraiyya district by BSP MLA Shekhar Tiwari and his men in December 2008. The MLA asked Gupta to give him money for then chief minister Mayawati’s birthday celebrations, but he refused. Gupta was abused, given electric shocks and beaten to death by the MLA and his men, who also locked up his wife in the bathroom.

The issue was sought to be quietly brushed under the carpet, but Shekar Tiwari was arrested and convicted for the crime.

A deputy chief medical officer, Y.S. Sachan, was murdered in Lucknow jail in June 2011 because he was preparing to expose some big names involved in the National Rural Health Mission scam. Two other CMOs -- Vinod Arya and B P Singh – too had been murdered. Sachan was taken to jail on corruption charges. The police tried to pass off the murder as suicide. The CBI is still investigating the matter.

More recently, in 2013, IPS officer Arun Kumar was ‘punished’ when he dared to deal with the rioters in Muzaffarnagar with a firm hand. Known to be an upright officer, he was ‘benched’ — kept on the wait list for a posting — for several months. Finally, he left the state on deputation to the Centre.

A DGP, who retired recently from service, explains the phenomenon. “The entire bureaucracy — both civil and police — in Uttar Pradesh is left with two options: They can either work as agents of the ruling party or remain dumped in inconsequential posts. Those who toe the line survive. Those that do not can either move out of the state or go to heaven. It is that simple”.