Absconder turns up at mayor’s swearing-in

Wanted in a murder case, 10 NBWs have been issued against Seth in three years

Between the celebrations at the swearing-in of new Lucknow Mayor Dinesh Sharma and corporators on Tuesday, there was one picture everyone—rather the police missed. That of former Deputy Mayor Abhay Seth offering sweets to Sharma. He was the same Abhay Seth whom police has not been able to find despite the 10 non-bailable warrants issued by the courts in the last three years.

The Indian Express caught him on the camera at the LMC office today, as easily as he was photographed outside his residence on February 25. Incidentally, this was also around the same time when the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate had asked the police to produce Seth in court on March 14, a fortnight after The Indian Express reported the case on February 26.

Today, Investigating Officer DSP Prem Prakash has this to say: “When the court issued a warrant against him in February we launched a manhunt, but could not find him. Now, since the warrant has not been recalled, we are still waiting for the court’s next directives.”

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Seth, along with former corporator Ashok Mishra and four policemen, has been charged in the murder of one Gopal Mishra as many as 12 years ago in 1994. Police had then reported that Mishra was killed in an encounter.

But his father Sadguru Sharan believed it was a murder planned by a “dirty police-power nexus” as his son, a private contractor, was a hurdle for land grabbers. Police had closed the case and submitted a final report in the court when Sharan started approached the HC and got the case transferred to CB-CID for re-investigation. But following a directive of the state government, the case was transferred back to the Aliganj police station.

But the HC send the case back to the Crime Branch of CID in August 1996. In September 2003, the CB-CID submitted a chargesheet and named six persons—Inspector Dev Dutta Rathore and Constables Munshi Lal, Sheo Bhushan Tewari and Ramchandra Singh, besides Abhay Seth and former corporator Ashok Mishra—in the case. However, the chargesheet says Seth and Mishra are untraceable.