A special CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) court has ordered the central agency to reopen the case of the mysterious death of a Karnataka-cadre IAS officer Anurag Tiwari in Lucknow three years ago. According to the order, a Superintendent of Police-rank officer will reinvestigate the case and ascertain if it was a case of murder.
The special court in Lucknow has also rejected the CBI’s closure report in the case.
The court order came after the protest application filed by Anurag’s brother Mayank. He has raised few clues and concern on the closure report filed by CBI and asked for further investigation in the matter.
The 2008 batch officer was posted in Bengaluru as Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Commissioner. In May 2017, he came to Lucknow after returning from a mid-career training at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussorie. He was staying in a guesthouse in Hazratganj where he was found dead under mysterious circumstances on May 17. On the request of family , the Uttar Pradesh government formed a Special Investigative Team to probe the case. They found that there was no CCTV footage of him walking out of the guesthouse. No one even visited during the nights of May 16 and 17. According to the postmortem report Anurag died of asphyxiation but the cause for lack of oxygen was not known.
On June 15, 2017 the CBI took over the case and submitted the final report on February, 2019 establishing that the death was accidental. However, in September Mayank challenged the closure report.
