What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
What TV doesn't, print can't; we deliver.
NOIDA: There’s a ring of enigma around 40-year-old Shrikant Tyagi, who abused, manhandled, and spat on a woman in a Noida society. How did he escape the cops for four days? How did he buy such a palatial flat? What was his source of income? Where did his political clout spring from?
After molesting the woman, Tyagi played hide-and-seek with the cops. He landed in the UP Police net but only after four days. The pertinent poser is: how did he manage to give cops of two states a slip? The situation was so dismally desperate that the UP Police had to announce a bounty of Rs 25,000 for his arrest.
The reason why he was able to evade his arrest is his political clout and patronage.
While owning properties — mostly ancestral — in Ghaziabad and Noida that run into crores, Tyagi would earn over Rs 8 lakh monthly from their rents. He has three flats and a market in Bhangel village in Noida.
Earlier, he was a property dealer but his political connections surged soon after he came in contact with an influential minister during the rule of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in the state.
Sources said that in 2007, he wanted to contest assembly elections from Modi Nagar on a BSP ticket, but failed to get a ticket. He also splurged on canvassing during the elections.
In 2018, he shifted from Ghaziabad to Noida Sector 93 in the Grand Omaxe Society with his wife. He bought a sprawling first-floor flat. He encroached on the vacant land around his house by turning it into a garden and carried out illegal construction on it in 2019. Following complaints from society members, the construction work was stopped but he again built a structure in 2020. This was razed by the Noida authorities on Monday.
Sources said due to his political network, he managed to get security cover and a pilot vehicle from Ghaziabad Police in 2020. However, now the UP Police are conducting a probe to find out who actually provided him security. It is also believed that he got security cover after he received some threatening calls from a VOIP number.
The residents of Grand Omaxe said they would often see him surrounded by a group of gunmen and bouncers. “He also had a private security cover,” said a source.
The residents also said the politicians would come calling and visit his house. They said they were in awe of him as he had developed political clout and held sway over Tyagi community people, who apparently used to like him.
Soon after an FIR was registered against him, his photos with many senior BJP politicians started surfacing on social media. He had put these photos on his Facebook account.
Tyagi used to tell people that he was a national executive member of BJP’s Kisan Morcha. The BJP, however, has distanced itself from the controversy and made it clear that he was never a member of any wing of the party.
On the cover page of his Facebook account, he has put up a poster of Atma Nirbhar Bharat’s Vocal for Local campaign launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Previously, seven cases — extortion, Goonda Act, rioting, voluntary causing hurt, assault and attempt to murder — were registered against him in Noida Phase 2 and Sector 39 police stations. Two new cases — molestation and cheating — were registered after his video of assaulting the woman became viral on social media on August 5.
A year ago, Tyagi was caught assaulting a senior citizen due to which a case of assault and attempt to murder was registered. Police sources said he was arrested once in this case but soon got bail. Almost all the police staff of the local Phase 2 police station knew him as a big politician.
The vehicles, including two SUVs seized from him, had ‘UP Govt’ stickers pasted on them. The UP Police are also investigating how he got these stickers even though he did not hold any post in any government department.
