SP MLA 'hounds' martyr's widow

Wants her to surrender gas agency

A martyred army officer’s widow in a letter to the UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav accused a SP legislator from Sadabad constituency in Hathras district, Devendra Agarwal of hounding her for transferring the ownership of her gas agency.

The agency operates in Sahpau area in the district.

In her letter, Sunita Gautam said she had been allotted the gas agency after her husband was martyred in a terrorist attack in March 1996.

“Agarwal has been exerting pressure on me to sell the gas agency to him after he became an MLA from the area,” she alleged.

She also alleged that the MLA had called her brother and father to his place and threatened them with dire consequences if the ownership was not transferred to him.

Apprehending a threat to her life from the MLA, she also met senior police officials on
Thursday and demanded registration of a case against him.

But Agarwal denied the allegations and said he did not know the woman and had never met her.

“I had only complained to the officials that gas cylinders were being sold in the black market by the agency,” he said.

Earlier, a UP minister Raj Kishore Singh had allegedly tried to grab a Rs 50 crore
Public Works Department tender in Basti district with the help of some employees of the department.

However, the irregularity was detected in time and the tender process was scrapped at the last moment.

Another UP minister Amnika Chaudhary’s goons had allegedly torched houses of the people at a village in Ballia district as they had not voted for him in the recent assembly polls.

The state lokayukta had indicted over a dozen ministers in the erstwhile Mayawati regime for grabbing public lands and tenders of various projects and indulging in other corrupt and criminal activities.