Lucknow, July 25 (IANS) Sub-inspector Hoshiar Singh, one of the 11 suspects in PWD engineer Manoj Gupta’s murder, was arrested in Uttar Pradesh’s Auraiya district Saturday after absconding for seven months, police said. Gupta had reportedly been killed as he refused to raise money for Chief Minister’s Mayawati’s birthday party.
However, police were unable to get custody of Singh yet. A decision on his police remand would be taken by a local court July 27.

“We could not get the police remand. The matter will now come up for hearing July 27. Till then, Singh would remain in judicial custody,” Additional Superintendent of Police Rajendra Kumar told IANS over telephone from Auraiya, about 250 km from Lucknow.

“We have certain evidence against Singh that indicate he was also involved in the murder. On July 27, we will try our best before the court to seek Singh’s police remand,” he added.

The official said that Singh was the only one out of the 11 accused in the murder case who was absconding. He was arrested from Auraiya this (Saturday) morning,” said

Kumar.

Even as police said Singh was nabbed, there were reports that the sub-inspector surrendered at the Kotwali police station.

On this, Kumar said: “There could be a possibility that Singh had made up his mind to surrender and was coming to the police station. However, we nabbed Singh midway, before he could surrender.”

Now all the 11 accused, including the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator Shekhar Tiwari, have been arrested.

Gupta, an executive engineer with the Public Works Department (PWD), was killed in a brutal manner, allegedly by Tiwari Dec 24, 2008 in a government guest house in Auraiya, as he had reportedly refused to shell out a huge donation demanded by the legislator for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s birthday celebrations Jan 15.

At the time of the murder, Singh was the officer in charge of Diviyapur police station, under whose jurisdiction the scene of the murder falls. Singh is considered to be close to Tiwari and political circles say his posting in Auraiya was at the legislator’s behest. Tiwari had handed over fatally injured Gupta at the police station — and the police two hours later took him to the district hospital where the doctors declared him dead.

On May 12, the Allahabad High Court had transferred the murder trial from the Auraiya district court to a Lucknow sessions court and ordered the trial to be completed within six months.