Lucknow, Jan 6 (IANS) Yogendra Dohre alias Bhatia, a former functionary of Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and prime accused in the murder of an engineer, Tuesday surrendered before a court after evading arrest for nearly two weeks. The court remanded him in police custody till Jan 19.

“We have obtained the remand,” Auraiya district police chief Nachiketa Jha told IANS, declining to elaborate further.

According to police, Dohre appeared before Chief Judicial Magistrate Samarpal Singh at around 12.30 p.m.

Dohre, a former BSP district president in Auraiya, about 250 km from here, was at large after the Dec 24 murder of Public Works Department (PWD) engineer M.K. Gupta.

Having failed to arrest Dohre, police Jan 3 announced a cash reward of Rs.2,500 on him.

There are 10 accused in the case, including BSP legislator Shekhar Tiwari, who is in police custody. Three of them are yet to be arrested.

The state police Saturday filed a charge sheet against the 10 accused.

Gupta was lynched in Auraiya of central Uttar Pradesh allegedly after he refused to shell out Rs.5 million the legislator had demanded as a “contribution” for Chief Minister Mayawati’s birthday bash Jan 15.

State police chief Vikram Singh has maintained that the engineer was killed because he refused to buckle under the legislator’s pressure to award contracts to his henchmen.