Mulayam should resign owning responsibility for killings:V P Singh

New Delhi, Jan 5 (UNI) Demanding a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the Nithari village serial killings, in which over several children were brutally murdered, former Prime Minister V P Singh today asked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh to tender resignation from his post owning moral responsibility for the incident.

''The serial killings in Nithari is evidence of the collapse of the entire law and order machinery in Uttar Pradesh.

Consequently, Chief Minister Mulayam Singh should resign owning moral responsibility for the incident,''Mr V P Singh told reporters here.

Skeletal remains of 17 persons, including 11 children, were unearthed from a drain in Sector 31, just yards away from the Nithari village, last week.

Mr Singh said he had the moral authority to demand resignation of the chief minister as he had himself tendered his resignation from the chief ministership in 1982 in the wake of massacre of several Yadavs in Dastampur village in Uttar Pradesh.

Alleging that contrary to the official figures, which put the number of skeletal remains recovered at 17, the actual number of children deaths were close to 40 as a similar number of children had been missing from their homes for the last two years, Mr Singh said,''the sheer scale of the killings and the brutality of the deaths is shocking and calls for a CBI probe into the matter.'' He also called for a CBI probe in the murder of Dr Kavita.

Speaking on the occasion, actor-turned-MP Raj Babbar, the president of V P Singh's Jan Morcha, said he had informed the media about disappearance of 24 children of Nithari village on September 21, 2006 but the police did not take it seriously. Babbar said the local police had been taking claims after breakthrough by the villagers.

Babbar blasted the government and police for inaction for two long years on the diasppearance of the children.

He alleged that Dr Kavita was murdered to protect the real culprits.

He also slammed Shivpal Singh Yadav, PWD minister in the Uttar Pradesh Government and younger brother of the UP CM, for describing the murders in Nithari as a 'minor incident'.

UNI