Explosive truth about UP Assembly and Yogi Adityanath’s administration
A week after the recovery of a suspected explosive inside the precincts of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, it seems the administration made a mountain out of a mole hill.
The UP government, that had gone the whole hog to term the incident as a conspiracy to blow up the Vidhan Sabha, appears to have suddenly gone on the backfoot after it was discovered that the white powder, recovered from under the seat of an MLA, was not the lethal explosive initially claimed by the local police.
The state government’s Lucknow-based forensic laboratory too described the 150 gm powder wrapped in a piece of paper as the extremely lethal PETN, that could not be detected even by sniffer dogs. Apparently, the lab officials and the police jumped to the conclusion without even carrying out the necessary tests for which the lab does not even have the wherewithall.
What followed was high drama with chief minister Yogi Adityanath going to the extent of making a statement in the Assembly and terming the incident as some kind of a conspiracy against the state’s 22 crore people. His supporters hyped it as a plot against the chief minister himself.
“One conspirator tried to compromise the security of more than 500 lawmakers and other employees and this cannot be allowed,” the chief minister said. He chose to refer the matter to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which he felt was appropriate to get to the bottom of the alleged “conspiracy”.
The powder was even sent to the Central Forensic Laboratory in Agra for further tests. However, four days after it was sent to Agra, the state government went in denial mode. “The forensic lab in Lucknow had confirmed that the powder was the lethal PETN so we did not consider the need to send it to any other place,” an official spokesman told mediapersons on Tuesday.
“It requires two more tests - gas chromatography mass spectrum and infra-red spectrum test,” the spokesman said. He declined to comment where these two tests were going to be carried out since the poorly equipped Lucknow laboratory did not have the capability to perform them.
Why the state government chose to deny having sent the powder to the central lab in Agra is a million dollar question. Even as late as Monday morning, a top police officer of the state himself told this scribe “the Agra lab is yet to send its findings”.
Insiders claim the denial followed instructions from the “top”, after the NIA refused to register a case after its sleuths discovered that the entire premise of the complaint was misconceived.
Since the Agra central lab refused to ratify the report of the Lucknow lab which had declared the powder as PETN, it was bound to cause much embarrassment to the chief minister.
A diktat was therefore issued to state officials to flatly deny that the powder was ever sent to Agra. And that was precisely what these officials were busy doing now, even though it meant complete loss of face for many top cops.
In any case, explosive experts in the Army maintain that an explosive powder kept in a packet is harmless until it is converted into a device together with a detonator. In case of the UP Vidhan Sabha incident, the powder was simply found wrapped in a piece of paper.
A senior police official told this scribe on the condition of anonymity that the entire faux pas took place because of a half-baked report by the Lucknow lab. He also alleged that the lab director had a shady track record of “cooking up” fake reports, for which he had received serious reprimand.
However, instead of initiating action against the lab, Yogi Adityanath was busy trying to ensure that he should not have to backtrack on his statement.