A day after a journalist was shot dead in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district, eight people, including four lekhpals, were reportedly taken into custody for interrogation, Hindustan Times reported.
Raghvendra Bajpai, a local correspondent with Dainik Jagran and an RTI activist, was shot dead around 3 pm when he left his Maholi residence on a motorcycle to meet the local tehsildar on Saturday. CCTV footage reportedly showed two motorcycle-borne men and a jeep following the journalist’s motorcycle only a few minutes before he was murdered on the Lucknow-Delhi national highway.
An FIR was lodged against unidentified persons and the body handed over to the journalist’s family members after a postmortem. They initially refused to perform the last rites until the assailants were arrested. The body was eventually cremated after a scuffle amid heavy police deployment.
Members of Bajpai’s family had earlier told The Indian Express they suspect the journalist was killed due to his reporting on irregularities in paddy procurement and stamp duty evasion in land purchases.
A Sitapur police official told HT that four lekhpals, including their association president Anish Dwivedi, Ram Singh Rana, DP Singh and Prateek Gupta, as well as a retired army official who stays in the journalist’s neighbourhood, have been taken into custody for questioning. A lekhpal is an official responsible for land-related documentation and revenue collection in rural India.
Prashant Kumar, Inspector General of Police, Lucknow range, told The Indian Express that they were looking into all possible angles.
Meanwhile, journalists’ associations in Sitapur, Shahjahanpur, Bareilly, Sultanpur, Bahraich and Barabanki districts held protests to seek justice on Sunday.
BJP national vice-president Rekha Verma, UP Congress Committee president Ajay Rai and several other leaders visited the journalist’s residence to offer their condolences. Samajwadi Party chief and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav accused the BJP-led state government of failing to maintain law and order while UP deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak assured the strictest action.
Bajpai is survived by his wife and two minor children.
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