Upright UP jailor kills wife, ends own life

He was suspended after SP came to power in March

He dared to take on a jailed politician and, as expected, paid the price when he was first transferred and then suspended after the Samajwadi Party came to power in March.

Four months later, R K Kesarwani, the suspended superintendent of Uttar Pradesh’s Basti district jail is dead.

He committed suicide at his home in the state capital on Friday after killing his wife Sunita.

Kesarwani, known to be an honest and upright officer was the superintendent of Meerut district jail, when he had a brush with jailed SP MLA Vijay Mishra.

Kesarwani had refused to succumb to political pressure and allow Mishra to violate the jail manual.

He did not even allow senior SP leader Shivpal Singh Yadav to meet Mishra in the during a a visit to the prison ahead of the Assembly polls.

Mishra is the same MLA who created a controversy and landed police and other officials in big trouble after he was seen at the lunch hosted by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav in honour of the UPA presidential nominee Pranab Mukherjee during his visit here before the presidential polls.

Both Mishra and Yadav had allegedly threatened Kesarwani that he would be taught a lesson.

As soon as the SP government was formed in the state, Kesarwani was transferred to Basti district jail.

A few days later, he was suspended - and was still under suspension when he committed suicide.

Although police officials here claimed that the incident might have been a fallout of a family feud, family sources said Kesarwani had been “very upset” over his suspension.

Recently, a senior UP official with the food and civil supplies department was suspended after he wrote a letter to the minister concerned exposing corruption in his department.