IAS officer held for plotting murder

An IAS officer was arrested by the crime branch for allegedly conspiring to murder a city-based businessman, Delhi Police said here on Friday.

Sanjeev Kumar -- a 1985 batch IAS officer of the Haryana cadre -- was arrested along with gangsters Shoukat Pasha and two shooters Taufiq, 28, and Mannan, 29, in separate raids conducted by police at different locations in Delhi.

Police also seized weapons from them.

Kumar,55, had hatched a plot to eliminate his close associate Tikka Hassan Mustafa, a businessman, in an indiscriminate firing made by hired contract killers, police said.

As part of the plan, police said, Kumar also wanted to get himself injured in the attack to implicate the family of former Haryan chief minister Om Prakash Chautala and his son Ajay Chautala.

The attack would have also helped him to extend his bail.

"The plan was hatched in Tihar jail where Sanjeev was in judicial custody along with the Chautalas," Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch), Ravindra Yadav said.

Kumar along with the gangster Pasha, who is undergoing life sentence in a murder case in Tihar jail, had hatched the whole plan when he was also lodged in the jail.

Pasha, 53, on Kumar's behest, had hired five contract killers Asad Pasha, Toufiq, Aftab, Mannan and Irshad.

Yadav said that a property dispute was the reason behind the attack.

Kumar, along with Om Prakash Chautala, Ajay Chautala and 55 others were convicted for 10 years imprisonment by a Delhi court in 2013 for illegally recruiting over 3,000 junior teachers.

Kumar, a resident of south Delhi's Vasant Kunj, was then the director of primary education in Haryana and the court had relied on his testimony for the verdict.

On March 5, the trial court verdict was upheld by the Delhi High Court for his alleged role in the offence along with other accused people. - IANS