Within a week of police inspector Subodh Kumar Singh being killed by a mob in Bulandshahr in UP, website Cobrapost has published an interview with him where he makes some sensational claims. The website claims that they had a brief interaction with Singh ‘many months ago’ at a Vrindavan police station.
Subodh Kumar Singh was the first investigation officer in the infamous Dadri lynching case in which Mohammad Akhlaq was killed by a mob over rumours that Akhlaq’s family had stolen a cow and slaughtered it. During the investigations into the case, police had recovered meat from the fridge of Akhlaq’s family, which was sent for forensic investigation.
Now Cobrapost claims that while talking to them, Subodh Singh had said that the then UP government pressurised him to change the meat recovered by police, and he was transferred by the government for refusing to do so. He said that the Samajwadi Party government led by CM Akhilesh Yadav had asked the police and veterinary doctor to ‘change the meat’. Singh said that he was asked to plant buffalo meat in place of the beef that they had collected from the victim’s house.
But the upright police officer had refused to comply with this illegal order from the state government. He said that the meat collected was divided into three parts, one part kept by police, one part sent to veterinary doctor, and the last part was sent to the forensic laboratory. According to the report, Subodh Singh said that changing the meat will be a crime under sections 201 and 218 of IPC, and he would not commit such a crime.
Although the police refused to change the meat, the veterinary doctor had complied with the order and had given a report that it was buffalo meat. Singh had said that the doctor was forced to change the report. He said that the original report issued by Dadri Government Veterinary Hospital said that the meat was beef, but it was later changed to buffalo meat. He also claimed that he had a copy of the original veterinary report. He said that before changing the report, DM Nagendra Pratap Singh had given it to him, and he made a photocopy of the same before returning it.
Subodh Singh told Cobrapost that the meat was changed at night by several officers, a doctor, and officials from forensic laboratory in Mathura. He claimed that even the DGP spoke to him on this issue. He said that they also seized the hide of the animal which was white in colour, meaning it has to be cow and can’t be a buffalo.
The incidents narrated by Subodh Kumar Singh as reported by the website roughly matches with what happened with investigations into the case. Singh was associated with the case from September 2015 to November 2015. In December 2015, the Dadri Government Veterinary Hospital in its preliminary report on the meat sample had said that it was mutton, not beef. But the final report issued by the Central Forensic and Scientific Lab in Mathura in May 2016 concluded that meat was indeed beef.
It is interesting to note that Cobrapost claimed they talked to Subodh Kumar Singh many months ago, and they kept the sensational claims made by the slain police officer with themselves for all these months. They had the video where Singh made these revelations, still they kept it hidden. They say it was part of a sting operation they were doing on violence by cow vigilantes. They say they “could not take the investigation into cow vigilantism to its logical conclusion for unavoidable reasons”. On their website, Cobraport also has posted the sting video of the interview with Singh.
