Is Amitabh Thakur a scapegoat for Mulayam in wife Nutan's crusade against UP minister?

Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh IPS officer Amitabh Thakur always had an activist’s zeal in him, a trait he shared with his lawyer-activist wife, Nutan. The duo often acted in tandem. The state government tolerated them so long as the activism didn’t hurt it; then Nutan decided to target state Mining Minister Gayatri Prajapati through a series of complaint of irregularities. It got the goat of Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav. Amitabh had to pay the price. It does not surprise many that the government decided to suspend him on charges not without much merit.[caption id=“attachment_2342294” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Suspended Amitabh Thakur. PTI[/caption] Amitabh, by his own admission, as quoted by a Lucknow newspaper, was a ’normal police officer’ till an incident in 2006 at Jasrana turned him into an activist. Hailing from Bihar, Thakur, inspector-general of police (civil defence), has been transferred about 30 times since then. He has been suspended twice in the past – once as superintendent of police (SP) of Gonda in 2004, and then as SP of Firozabad in 2006. It was in Firozabad that the Jasrana incident that he recalls as the turning point of his career took place. It saw him pitched against the then Jasrana MLA Ramvir Singh Yadav, a Samajwadi Party leader. An irate crowd had chased and assaulted Thakur on 27 July 2006, and he was saved by the intervention by Mulayam Singh Yadav. This fact was part of the conversation with Mulayam Singh Yadav that Thakur recorded on 10 July, and had attached as evidence that Mulayam had threatened him over phone. Incidentally, in both 2004 and 2006 the SP government was in power with Mulayam as chief minister. His wife Nutan Thakur, a teacher turned lawyer-activist, is known in Lucknow’s media and NGO circuit as a vocal activist, ready with a statement, RTI application and a PIL in a wide range of subjects. The duo has staged dharnas, participated in rallies and submitted representations to authorities on different occasions. The subjects on which she has sought responses through RTI have ranged from crime cases, irregularities in sectors as diverse as education, civic affairs, water supply, working of the police such as posting, promotion, transfer and suspension and so on. In many such cases she followed up the responses with PIL filed in high court. On 11 July, Thakur registered a complaint at Hazratganj police station against Mulayam Singh Yadav, alleging that Yadav had threatened him over the phone. He provided an audio clip of the said conversation as evidence. The same night, an FIR was registered at Gomtinagar police station against Thakur under Sections 376 (rape), 504 (intentional insult) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the IPC, on the basis of an earlier complaint by a Ghaziabad-based woman. Thakur’s wife was named as co-accused. Thakur has said that he will move court against the decision, adding that all charges against him were unfounded. “All I have done is point inconsistencies in working of some government officials.” The timing of the suspension, he felt, was suspicious since he had only raised an issue against Mulayam Singh Yadav, he said. He also claimed that the government did not inform him about his suspension and he got to know of it through the media. On Monday, Thakur had gone to Delhi and approached the Union home ministry seeking a CBI probe into the rape case filed against him after he lodged a complaint against Mulayam for threatening him. He had met the additional secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs Anant Kumar Singh and also sought Central force protection for himself and his wife. In Lucknow, his suspension order was issued late in the night with the government slapping on him charges of dereliction of duty, indiscipline, taking an anti-establishment approach and flouting high court orders. Interestingly, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has not denied that a conversation did take place between his father Mulayam and Amitabh Thakur. Replying to media queries at a function in Farrukhabad on Monday, Akhilesh said, “Mulayam Singh Yadav can scold the chief minister, there is nothing wrong in him scolding an official.” He saw “nothing wrong” in his father talking to the officer. Thakur and Nutan have been alleging that the threat by Mulayam came after Nutan had filed a complaint before the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta against minister Prajapati. In December last year, separate complaints were filed in the Lokayukta’s office against Prajapati alleging that he had amassed huge wealth through illegitimate means while being a minister. These complaints also gave details of property owned by Prajapati and his family members and instances of illegal mining. The Lokayukta justice (retired) NK Mehrotra issued notices to all concerned and launched an investigation. In January, Nutan too lodged a complaint in the Lokayukta’s office about a mining syndicate allegedly headed by Prajapati, and she also gave details of several companies allegedly floated by Prajapati. However, as the Lokayukta probe moved on, the earlier complainants withdrew their complaints saying they had no evidence against the minister. Nutan Thakur alleged they had done so under political pressure but since this could not be proved the Lokayukta subsequently gave a clean chit to Prajapati in most of the points raised in the complaint. Since then, while Nutan and Amitabh continued with their activism, she kept petitioning the Lokayukta for further action in the remaining points of the complaint, the progress on which is unknown. Prajapati is a relatively little-known politician who shot to fame after defeating Amita Singh from Amethi constituency in the 2012 assembly election. He was inducted into the Akhilesh ministry in 2013 and has been heading the mining ministry since then.