Kanpur: The noose is being tightened around BJP leader Priya Ranjan Diwakar after a farmer Babu Singh, 52, accused him and his aides of grabbing 10 bighas of his land and committed suicide by jumping in front of a speeding train in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur on September 9.
Commissioner of Police R.K. Swarnkar said, “Those responsible will go to jail.”
On Thursday, police carried out searches in Noida, Lucknow, Mainpuri, Prayagraj, and Fatehpur for the arrest of the accused and questioned over 50 people.
In his suicide note addressed to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Babu Singh, a resident of Chakeri in Kanpur, alleged that Ranjan usurped his farmland by giving him a bogus cheque of Rs 6.25 crore. The note was found near the track, said police.
The police have booked six people, including Priya Ranjan Diwakar, his nephew Jitendra, driver Bablu, Noida businessman Rahul Jain, Madhur Pandey and Shivam Singh Chauhan on charges of abetment to suicide and cheating on a complaint filed by the wife of the deceased.
The FIR was lodged under sections 306 (abetment to suicide), 506 (insult), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy), said the police.
Ranjan, a former BJP candidate from the Kishni Assembly constituency in Mainpuri, allegedly offered to buy the land from Singh by pressuring him.
Giving in to the “pressure tactics”, Singh agreed to sell the property for Rs 6.25 crore, for which he was given a cheque, alleged the farmer’s wife Bittan Devi, 45.
After Babu Singh transferred the land through registry in March, 2023, Ranjan asked him for the cheque on the pretext of an error. He promised that Singh would get the cheque the next day, but did not pay the money, according to the FIR. Bittan Devi said Ranjan and others had started selling the plots in Ahirvan village in suburban Kanpur.
JCP (law and order) Anand Prakash Tiwari said: “It has been corroborated that no money was paid to the family against the land deal.”
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