Lucknow: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday attacked the Uttar Pradesh government over the death of a Kanpur businessman in a police raid, claiming that the case is linked to an extortion racket and "someone" is trying to save himself.
Businessman Manish Gupta died in a Gorakhpur hotel during the raid late on Monday night, prompting authorities to suspend
six policemen and book them for murder. The policemen are absconding.
"No policeman has been arrested in the Manish Gupta murder case. This shows that they did not escape themselves but were made to escape. Actually, someone is not saving the accused but saving himself as its strings are linked to the 'vasoolitantra' (extortion racket)," Yadav said in a tweet in Hindi.
"'Zero-tolerance' is also a BJP jumla (rhetoric)," he said, in an apparent reference to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's assertion that the state has zero-tolerance towards crime and corruption.
Referring to the incidents of violence during the panchayat elections, Yadav told a press conference that as the BJP had used officials of the administration during
the polls for "political reasons", its government is now defending them.