Just 48 hours after inspector Subodh Kumar lost his life in the Bulandshahr violence that took place on December 3, a Cobrapost expose has claimed that the slain police officer—who was also the investigating officer in the Akhlaq lynching case—was forced by the then Samajwadi Party government to change the meat sample seized from the crime scene.

According to an article posted by the news website on Wednesday evening, the “shocking revelation” was made by Singh many months ago when the Cobrapost team met him while investigating cow-related lynchings across the country. As the narrative goes, the “brief interaction” between the team and Singh took place in a Vrindavan police station, during which he [Singh] “made many revelations on how the state government, then headed by Akhilesh Yadav, worked overtime to manipulate the outcome of veterinary and FSL examinations.”

The interactions between Singh and the Cobrapost team—who had posed as researchers supposedly working on a film project—were part of a hidden-camera investigation that Cobrapost had launched into the killings of innocent people by gau-rakshaks in the name of cow protection.

While referring to the meat his team and seized from the crime spot on the night the incident, Singh told the team that the SP government wanted him [Singh] and the veterinary doctor to be pressurised into changing that meat. “They wanted to plant the buffalo meat in place of the meat we had collected from the site of the incident,” he said, adding that the report given by the doctor prima facie had also stated that the meat recovered was cow meat. “But the doctor was forced to change the report. I refused to change it. Its copy is still lying with me.”

Describing how the meat was changed during night time—an act that he had denied to take part in—Singh said that another sub-inspector from his department was also present at the time the meat was changed. According to the article, even the then DGP had spoken to him [Singh] on this issue and had asked him what had he seen prima facie, to which, Singh had said that the hide that was recovered from the crime scene was white in colour thereby “making it certain” that it was cow meat.