Another officer loses life to corruption

An Assistant Development Officer (ADO) was killed after he refused to sign documents pertaining to developmental projects in newly-created Kanshiram Nagar district in Uttar Pradesh.

Satya Prakash Singh, who was posted at Sahawar block, about 200 kilometres from here, was brutally hacked to death, police officials said. Seven people, including two colleagues of Singh, have been named in the FIR filed in this connection by Kusum Lata, Singh’s wife.
The officer’s body was recovered on Monday from near a canal in the district. “He was blindfolded and the body bore several injury marks. It appears that he was killed in a brutal manner,” officials said. Singh has been missing since Sunday.

Kusum Lata alleged that some employees of Singh’s department and a village panchayat chief had been exerting pressure on him to sign on some “fake” documents pertaining to development works in the area. “The steno of district chief development officer Atar Singh had called my husband to his office on Sunday evening,” she said.

When Singh did not return till late in the night, Kusum informed the police and search was launched. His body was recovered Monday morning.

An FIR has been lodged against village pradhan Pappu Yadav, ADO of Soron block, Atar Singh and four others in this connection. Singh, according to sources, was an honest and upright officer.

The death of Satya Prakash Singh is the latest in a series of killings of upright officers across the country. A few days back, a  Karnataka administrative service officer, S P Mahantesh, was killed allegedly for exposing irregularities in allotment of land by several cooperative societies. Earlier, an IPS officer, Narendra Kumar Singh, was also killed in Madhya Pradesh after he launched a drive against illegal mining mafia.