Ex-UP bureaucrat booked for his tweet about floating bodies in Ganga

Uttar Pradesh police on Saturday booked former IAS officer Surya Pratap Singh for his tweets about dead bodies floating in the Ganga and other rivers in the state.

According to the sources, the police in the state's Unnao district lodged a case against Singh under sections 153 (promoting enmity between different groups), 505 (incitement to commit offence against any class or community), IT Act and the Epidemics Act.

Singh had said in his tweet that the state government had cremated 67 dead bodies in pits on the banks of the Ganga in Unnao. ''It is humiliating for Hindus not to cremate the dead in accordance with Hindu rituals,'' he had tweeted.

The ex-IAS officer had also tweeted a picture showing the floating dead bodies in the river.

Read | PIL in SC for judicial probe into recovery of bodies from Ganga

''The Unnao police has said that my tweet on dead bodies is misleading.....two cases have been registered against me in two days...it's a prize for exposing the UP model,'' he said.

Hundreds of dead bodies were found floating in Ganga, Yamuna and other rivers in different parts of the state. It was suspected that these bodies could be of people, who had died from Covid-19.

Singh had also been booked last year for questioning the Covid policy of the state government. He had claimed that the district magistrates were 'admonished' by a top state bureaucrat for increasing the number of Coronavirus tests.

Singh, who had taken voluntary retirement (VRS), had tweeted that UP's Covid policy appeared to be ''No tests, No Corona'' and wondered if the low number of Coronavirus positive cases in the state were due to less number of tests.