New Delhi: A decade on, the murder of Uttar Pradesh police officer Zia-ul-Haque still hangs over Thakur legislator Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya.

With the Supreme Court on September 26 directing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to further investigate Raja Bhaiya's alleged role in Haque's murder, the almost forgotten incident of March 2, 2013 has sprung back to life.

Last year in November, the Allahabad high court had quashed a 2014 order by a special judicial magistrate, CBI, Lucknow rejecting the final report submitted by the CBI in the murder case. The SJM court had directed the CBI to conduct further investigations in the case and pulled it up for not conducting a proper probe.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court, hearing a petition filed by the deceased officer's widow Parveen Azad, set aside the high court order and upheld the order of the special magistrate directing further investigation.

A 2009-Provincial Police Service officer and native of Deoria, Zia-ul-Haque was a deputy superintendent of police posted as the circle office of Kunda in Pratapgarh district. Raja Bhaiya, the dominant local MLA and scion of the erstwhile Bhadri estate, was then a powerful cabinet minister in the Samajwadi Party government run by Akhilesh Yadav. Though Raja Bhaiya was an independent legislator, over the years he acquired notoriety for being a Thakur 'bahubali' and one of the most popular faces of the community in the state.

On the night of March 2, 2013, DSP Haque reached Balipur Village in Hathgawan area with his team after receiving information that the headman Nanhe Yadav had been shot dead. The pradhan had a longstanding dispute with the alleged assailants, who were linked to Raja Bhaiya, even though the minister denied any involvement in the entire episode.

An irate mob of locals attacked the house of the alleged suspect and tried to set it on fire. By now the police team led by Haque had reached Balipur. They tried to control the situation but some persons in the mob led by the pradhan's family unleashed an attack on the police. Haque was brutally assaulted with lathis and hockey sticks before being dragged around and shot to death. His service revolver was also not found from the spot and was recovered later after a few days. Suresh Yadav, the brother of the pradhan, was also shot dead in the episode. The other policemen who had accompanied Haque to the village allegedly fled from the scene. While the eight policemen were later suspended, the question of why they left their officer alone to deal with a violent mob has still not found closure.

The CBI, which probed the matter, later concluded that Suresh had died of a bullet injury after he accidentally shot himself in the chaos.

The incident, involving the murder of a Muslim police officer and two Yadavs and the alleged involvement of a powerful minister in the SP government, sent shockwaves in Lucknow. Four FIRs were lodged in the triple murder case. One of them lodged on the complaint of Haque's wife Azad, named Raja Bhaiya, his aides Hari Om, Nagar panchayat president Gulshan Yadav and driver Rohit Singh and charged them with murder and criminal conspiracy.

Azad had alleged that the murder was not a random incident but planned. She accused the minister of orchestrating her husband's murder as he had thwarted the politician's alleged illegal mining business in the area. She claimed her husband had been receiving death threats over his investigation.

Raja Bhaiya denied all the allegations, famously saying that if he had any issues with the officer, rather than getting him killed he could have just got him transferred.

Raja Bhaiya resigned from the Akhilesh Yadav cabinet in which he held the portfolio of food and civil supplies minister. The investigation was handed over to the CBI.

Just five months later, the investigation agency, however, granted a clean chit to Raja Bhaiya and his men. It said it did not found any evidence against him. Raja Bhaiya said he had been falsely implicated as part of a political conspiracy and opined that the officer's widow had fallen into a trap due to her emotional state. In October 2013, he was reinstated as a cabinet minister in the Akhilesh Yadav government.

Once labelled as “Kunda ka goonda” by his detractors, Raja Bhaiya enjoyed the goodwill of both the SP and the BJP whenever they were in power. He held ministerial positions under the governments of Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta, Rajnath Singh, Mulayam Singh and Akhilesh Yadav, despite only being an independent legislator in UP's multi-party system.

He has won the Kunda assembly seats seven times in a row, since 1993. His latest win in 2022 was also the first time he contested on a party symbol – he was the candidate of the Jansatta Dal (Loktantrik), newly-floated by him to espouse the concerns of the 'upper castes' and against what he called the "appeasement of Dalits". After the BJP came to power in 2017, Raja Bhaiya's relationship with Akhilesh Yadav started to deteriorate after the latter inched close to Mayawati's BSP for an alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. When Mayawati was in power, Raja Bhaiya had to face the heavy hand of the law and he has always expressed resentment towards her.

In 2018, when Raja Bhaiya was still an SP ally, he left Yadav red-faced after he cross-voted in favour of the BJP in a Rajya Sabha election. Once a favourite of his father Mulayam Singh's, Raja Bhaiya was now dubbed a "liar" and "dhamkidar" by Akhilesh, who started to call out the Thakur strongman's feudal roots.

Interestingly, the 2022 assembly election was the first one in two decades when the SP fielded a candidate against Raja Bhaiya in Kunda. The SP candidate was none other than Gulshan Yadav, the former nagar panchayat chairman and co-accused in the DSP murder case.

Once an aide, Gulshan, who is designated a gangster by the police, was now a political rival. As expected, Raja Bhaiya won the election but with a considerably reduced margin.

Gulshan Yadav was in May nominated by the SP as its caretaker district president as his brother and actual district president was jailed by the Yogi Adityanath government. Gulshan faces 31 criminal cases and on August 29 was arrested by the police in connection with a dacoity case, as per police records.

On July 8, 2014, special judicial magistrate, CBI court rejected the final report of the CBI and directed it to further investigate the case, after Azad filed a protest petition. The SJM court pointed out several flaws in the CBI's investigation, observing that it did not conduct a proper investigation with respect to the facts stated by Azad. The statements of then SHO Kunda, Sarvesh Kumar Mishra and then assistant sub-inspector Kunda, Vinay Kumar Singh, who were with the DSP were not recorded. The court wondered why when Haque was being assaulted, his team did not take any action despite being armed. "It is also difficult to believe that only C.O. Ziaul Haq was beaten up badly while other police persons did not incur more than a few injuries and scratches, as has been known from the perusal of the medical evidence," the SJM said.

The court indicted the CBI and observed that the agency "just filled up the columns for the sake of formality" while gathering evidence and recording the statements of the people of the village, ignoring Azad's contention that the locals were under the influence of the accused persons and feared giving any adverse statements.

The court also said it was not clear when Raja Bhaiya underwent a polygraph test. The CBI approached the Allahabad high court against the SJM order. A bench of Justice Dinesh Singh on November 25, 2022 quashed the SJM's order, saying it was not based on facts and law but on the assumptions of the magistrate.

Justice Singh said that Azad was not an eyewitness but her allegations were based on hearsay and unfounded media reports. The case was thoroughly investigated by the CBI, the judge ruled, underlining that the SJM's order amounted to calling for re-investigation of the offence, and not further investigation.

The high court also said that there was no case under investigation by Haque in respect of illegal mining against any person closely connected to MLA Raja Bhaiya, who had also voluntarily subjected to polygraph test.

Azad challenged the high court's order in the Supreme Court. On September 26, a division bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Bela M. Trivedi said that the high court had taken "a hyper technical approach in the matter, making superfine distinction between re-investigation and further investigation".

The SJM did not commit any error in directing further investigation, the apex court said. "We have gone through the order of the learned Special Magistrate and find that she had followed the proper course," the judges said, directing the CBI to complete further investigation in the case as directed by the SJM within three months

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