LUCKNOW, 13 September 2007 — The chief minister of India’s most populous state has sacked 6,500 police officers, saying they paid bribes to get jobs under the previous government. Chief Minister Mayawati also fired 12 senior officers late on Tuesday who were in charge of police recruitment in Uttar Pradesh state, one of India’s most lawless, during the rule of her predecessor, Mulayam Singh Yadav.
After winning power in May, Mayawati ordered an inquiry that concluded that thousands of policemen paid recruiters 150,000 to 300,000 rupees ($3,700 to $7,300) for their jobs under Yadav’s government.
“They would have only got down to misusing the uniform to retrieve whatever they spent to get the jobs,” said Shashank Shekhar Singh, the state’s Cabinet secretary.
Businessman Charged With Killing
A wealthy Indian businessman was charged yesterday with the rape and murder of one of the 19 victims of the most gruesome serial killings in the country in recent times, the lawyer for the victims’ families said.
The discovery last December of the body parts of 19 children and young women packed in 57 plastic bags and buried in the backyard and the drains around Moninder Singh Pandher’s home near New Delhi shocked India.
But after a bungled investigation by local police, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) ended up blaming the killings on Pandher’s servant, Surender Koli.
While the victims’ families insisted Koli was being made a scapegoat, Pandher faced only minor charges, including being involved in a prostitution racket and pressuring witnesses.
But a court in Ghaziabad city near Delhi extended the charges yesterday to include the rape and murder of one of the victims.
“The court found prima facie evidence connecting him with rape, murder, concealment of evidence and conspiracy,” said Khalid Khan, the families’ lawyer.
