Five days after crime, STF roped in to trace Sitapur journalist’s killers

UP Special Task Force (STF) was on Wednesday roped in to trace the men who shot dead a journalist in broad daylight in Sitapur’s Sultanpur area last Saturday. The move was taken after local police failed to get any breakthrough in the case even five days after the murder of Raghvendra Bajpai, 36.

On Tuesday, Press Council of India sought a report from the director general of police, and Sitapur’s district magistrate and superintendent of police about action initiated so far in the case. Bajpai worked in the Maholi tehsil of Sitapur for a national Hindi news daily.

A senior police official confirmed that an STF team visited Sitapur and collected a base transceiver station (BTS) to zero in on suspicious mobile numbers active near the crime scene at the time of the incident. Explaining BTS, he said it was a fixed radio transceiver that connected mobile devices to a mobile network, and it was key part of a cellular network’s base station system that helped trace the mobile number operational in a particular area.

Another police official privy to the investigation said Sitapur police were puzzled as multiple reasons were surfacing for the crime. He said the investigation so far revealed that several lekhpals were troubled by the articles that Bajpai wrote. Bajpai had recently exposed corruption in the purchase of rice, and the sale of land exempting revenue charges.

He said the journalist had also written against the anomalies in the functioning of brick kilns. His links with a woman also surfaced during the investigation, the official said, adding the journalist spoke to the woman often as his mobile call details suggested that he talked to her at least 40 times in the last one month.

Over 36 people had been interrogated so far, but nothing conclusive came out, he added.

He said in the CCTV footage scanned by the police, a motorcycle and a four-wheeler were seen following the journalist only a few minutes before he was shot dead by two motorcycle-borne assailants near Hempur railway crossing around 3.15 pm on March 8.