Lucknow:
When Dr Y S Sachan was found dead in a Lucknow jail, officials declared it was a suicide. They said he had hung himself in a bathroom at the jail.
Today, the government revealed that his body was marked with nine injures - eight of them caused by a weapon. A blade was found near his corpse.
This will bolster Opposition parties who have been insisting that Dr Sachan - the Deputy Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Family Welfare - was killed to prevent him from embarrassing the government.
Dr Sachan was arrested in mid-April. He was accused by the UP government of commissioning the murder of his boss, Dr BP Singh, on April 2. He was also alleged to have played a role in the death of Dr Vinod Arya, who was Chief Medical Officer before Dr Singh. Dr Arya was killed in October. Dr Sachan officiated as Chief Medical Officer till Dr Singh took over. The department handled by these doctors had a budget of Rs 3000 crore according to some estimates.
The government had suggested that Dr Sachan was involved in scams that involved buying medicines and other supplies at inflated prices. His greed allegedly motivated him to hire shooters to kill Dr Singh. After Mr Singh's murder, two ministers resigned, claiming moral responsibility and accepting that he had been killed for his attempts to check corruption in his department.
Dr Sachan's wife wants a CBI inquiry to determine how he died. Opposition parties like the BJP and the Samajwadi Party believe he was being made a scapegoat for the murders of two Chief Medical Officers, and was killed to protect government officials who had been colluding with contractors to loot the state.
(Read: Sachan's family agrees to funeral)In Lucknow, as Samajawadi Party workers protested against Dr Sachan's death, the police retaliated with water cannons and a lathi-charge. Senior leader Akhilesh Yadav said, "The government can say that it was a case of suicide but the Samajwadi Party and I believe that he has been killed. Our party is demanding a CBI probe."