The mortal remains of IPS officer Narendra Kumar Singh were consigned to flames in his native village Lalpur in Mathura district on Friday. The officer had been crushed to death by a tractor trolley in Morena district in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday, when he tried to check illegal mining in the area. The pyre of the officer was lit by his wife Madhurani Tewatia and the ceremonial guard of honour was given to the slain officer.
Madhurani Tewatia, an IAS officer posted in Gwalior, is in an advanced stage of pregnancy. The couple is expecting their first child.
The body of the IPS officer was taken to Aligarh on Thursday night to his parents’ home and then brought to Lalpur village on Friday morning for the last rites where a massive crowd had collected to pay homage to the officer.
Later, briefly talking to the media, the officer’s father Keshav Dev and wife Madhurani demanded a CBI probe into the incident and termed it as a murder.
“The mining mafias had been threatening Narendra for last several days and one BJP MLA even transferred Madhurani as she was not ready to hear his plea,” the father said, adding that he now feared for the life of the officer’s widow.
Narendra Kumar, a 2009 batch IPS officer, was on probation and his wife Madhurani Tewatia, is presently on maternity leave in Delhi.
Singh, who got selected into the IPS and was allotted the Bihar cadre in 2009, got his cadre changed to Madhya Pradesh only about fourth months ago after he got married to Dr Madhu Rani Teotia, a 2008 batch IAS officer borne on the Madhya Pradesh cadre. Currently, Ms Teotia is posted as additional collector Gwalior and is now on maternity leave in New Delhi. The state additional director general of police (intelligence) R.K. Shukla told this correspondent that Singh was to proceed on paternity leave soon after Holi.
During the short period of less than two months as SDOP Bamor in Morena district, Singh had led a campaign against those engaged in illegal mining of sand and stones. In this short span of time, he had seized 16 tractors — four transporting stones and two of them carrying sand, three trucks (all carrying illegally mined sand) and eight dumpers engaged in transporting sand.