Mystery surrounds murder of Uttar Pradesh BJP leader’s wife

LUCKNOW - Mystery shrouds the murder of Revati Singh, the 79-year-old wife of senior Uttar Pradesh BJP leader Hukum Singh, who was found strangulated Saturday morning at her home in Muzaffarnagar town.

Police appeared to be as clueless as Hukum Singh himself, who was in Lucknow when the incident took place in his hometown Muzaffarnagar, about 400 km from here and notorious as the undeclared capital of state’s highly crime prone “wild west”.

Singh represents the Kairana assembly constituency from the same district.

Talking to mediapersons here, state Additional Director General of police Brij Lal ruled out robbery or loot as motive behind the murder in Gandhi colony. “The manner in which every valuable, including cash and jewellery, was found to be intact in the house clearly indicates that burglary was not the motive of the assailants,” Lal said.

“Singh’s personal licensed rifle and his personal security officer’s carbine were also untouched inside one of the three bedroom cupboards, that were open,” he said. However, a briefcase with a combination lock, was found empty and lying on the floor. The other two cupboards were locked.

“Considering that the door of her bedroom was open, shows that there was no forced entry, but it was obviously someone whom she recognized,” he pointed out. The lady was known to be in the habit of bolting every door of the house before she went to bed.

A widely respected man, Hukum Singh was also not seen as someone bearing any kind of enmity with anybody. Originally a Congressman and minister under Congress regimes in the eighties, he later switched loyalties to the BJP where he was also the party’s deputy leader in the state assembly.

While each of his seven daughters are married and living independently, Singh’s grand-nephew used to live in the same house as part of the joint family. Besides, there were two old servants attached to the Singh family for years. The grand-nephew and the servants discovered Revati Singh’s strangulated body with a few blood stains on the pillow around 10 a.m.

Lal said: “Even the dog squad has failed to get any trail of the assailants, apparently due to heavy overnight rains.”