New Delhi: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has instructed officials to collect the damages from the accused who has been booked for digging up a newly built road in Shahjahanpur because the contractor did not pay the alleged ‘goonda tax’. The accused is an associate of a BJP MLA, as per an FIR filed in this matter. The FIR states that the MLA’s crony, along with 15-20 accomplices, used a heavy earth-mover to tear up the road on October 2 night.


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Ramesh Singh of M/s Shakuntala Singh, Gorakhpur, the firm that was building the road, said: “The road was seven-km long and was being built at a project cost of Rs 12.5 crore. The accused, Jagveer Singh, claimed to be an associate of the local MLA and demanded 5 per cent of the project cost as ‘tax’.


He and his accomplices have been harassing and assaulting our workers on site for the past few months. "We were about to finish the project in 15 days when he and his gang arrived at the site with a heavy earth-mover around 9 p.m. on October 2. They ripped up a three km section of the road and made holes in the rest of the stretch.”


Shahjahanpur SP Ashok Kumar Meena said: “We lodged the FIR right after we received the application on October 3. We also detained some people for interrogation and a police team is working to nab the main culprit soon.”


A government statement said that Divisional Commissioner Saumya Agrawal has ordered Public Works Department (PWD) chief engineer Sanjay Tiwari to evaluate the damage to the road and the financial loss caused by it.


Agrawal also said that the police were raiding places to arrest all the culprits in the case. The Jaitpur police in Shahjahanpur have registered the case under the Damage to Public Property Act 1984 and other related sections.