In the city that houses a celebrated medieval maze, the Madhumita Shukla murder case has been set on a path that will leave it lost and meandering. Despite the evidence of sacked Uttar Pradesh minister Amarmani Tripathi's association in the case and a CID report that names him the "prime accused", the heavy hand of state Chief Minister Mayawati is working overtime to ensure that Tripathi's soiled slate is shown up as clean.

SHAKY SALUTE: Mayawati's decision to suspend the entire team of CID officers probing the murder of Madhumita Shukla (top) has stunned the state's law enforcement circles

On the one hand is the state's Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID) which has submitted an explosive report, available exclusively with India Today, focusing on Tripathi. On the other is Mayawati suspending the very men responsible for it: CID DG Mahendra Lalka, SP Amitabh Yash and five junior officers who made up the CID investigation team. The chief minister said the officers had been suspended for not acting swiftly enough-even though they readied their report two days before the month's deadline given to them.

If Mayawati has her way, the evidence gathered by the CID may amount to nothing. At a press conference she announced that Tripathi could be reinstated if Shukla's mother Shanti Devi signed a statement saying that Tripathi was not involved in the murder. Instead of hard evidence, the word of a distraught, and easily pressured housewife, is to serve as judgement.

If the details of the CID's case diaries and the presentation report, are anything to go by, Tripathi has plenty to answer for. According to the CID documents, Tripathi has refused to co-operate with investigators at every turn.

After Shukla was shot dead at on May 9, Tripathi declared he was prepared for any forensic test to prove his innocence. On June 15, when the CID team landed at his posh LaPlace Colony home and asked him to provide a blood sample for a DNA test to establish the paternity of the foetus found in Shukla's womb during the post-mortem, he refused.

NOT YET GUILTY: Prime accused Tripathi seems to have enough reasons to smile

In their case diaries CID officers allege that Tripathi replied to the request for a sample by saying, "Why are you taking only my sample? Go to Mulayam Singh Yadav and take his sample also." According to the report, Tripathi's initial statements have been found to be contradictory. He had maintained that he had hardly met Shukla for over a year. The CID produced bank documents that prove Tripathi had in fact bought a refrigerator for Shukla and paid for it with a personal cheque four days before her murder. On the basis of entries in Shukla's diary, railway coupons in Tripathi's name and a scanning of his mobile phone record, the CID painstakingly establishes their relationship. Last year, when Shukla was arrested by the Udaipur police on a charge of stealing ornaments from the house of a jeweller, it was Tripathi who travelled to Udaipur and applied for her bail.

Shukla's diary contained details of their relationship, her emotions on finding she was pregnant and her determination to give birth to her baby. Deshraj, Shukla's servant and the only eyewitness to the fatal shooting, informed the CID that she performed black magic rituals at home, praying, he said, for Tripathi to separate from his wife Madhumani. According to the report, Shukla was actually made to keep her date with death through a phone call. According to her mother, Shukla had been due to leave for her village, Lakhimpur Kheri, on May 8 to spend the last few months of her pregnancy there. But Shanti Devi said someone "close to her" had asked her to postpone her trip by a day. The next day she was dead.

EXCLUSIVE

Damning Documents The CID's presentation report and case diaries, available with India Today, present startling new facts

LONG-TERM: "Amarmani and Madhumita had an intimate relationship. They stayed together in hotels. A diary penned by Madhumita and Tripathi's SIM and mobile records prove the relationship."

OPEN CASE: "Amarmani would often stay at Madhumita's Paper Mill residence, his white Cielo and driver waiting outside."

MONEY TRAIL: "Amarmani had been helping her financially. Just four days before the killing he bought a fridge for Madhumita through a personal cheque."

DATE WITH DEATH: "Madhumita was to leave for her village on May 8, a day before she was killed but was told to stay back for a day over the phone."

BLACK MAGIC: "Deshraj, Madhumita's servant, said that she would do magic rituals at home praying for a divorce between Tripathi and his wife Madhumani."

TELEPHONE ID: "The killers reached Paper Mill Colony on May 8 but didn't find her at home late at night. They then called Amarmani's home in Maharajganj."

STEALING AWAY: "Three days after the killing the Lucknow Police allowed Tripathi's men to take away his personal belongings from Madhumita's residence."

NON-COOPERATION: "The CID did not get call details of Tripathi's BSNL mobile phone despite a categorical demand a month ago."

QED: "Amarmani Tripathi refused to give his blood sample for a DNA test... the CID team has concluded that it is Amarmani Tripathi who is the prime suspect in the Madhumita murder case."

The CID papers establish that when the killers reached Shukla's home on May 8 evening and did not find her there, they called Tripathi's house in his constituency of Maharajganj on the Uttar Pradesh-Nepal border. The CID seized registers from the phone booth close to Shukla's home showing that a call had been made to Tripathi's residence the night before the killing. The owner's description of the callers tallied with Deshraj's descriptions of the shooters.

Tripathi did everything but co-operate. Three days after the killing the Lucknow Police allowed his men to take away his personal belongings from Shukla's home. BSNL did not supply call details of one of Tripathi's mobile phones even a month after the CID made the request.

Aware of the full impact of their findings, the CID team did not hand over their presentation report to Mayawati on June 16. A day later when the CID issued their summons to Tripathi, he was strolling in the corridors of power, in Mayawati's offices. In placing Tripathi squarely at the centre of the episode, the officers had done the unthinkable-pointed a finger at a Mayawati henchman who had more than proved his usefulness to her by ensuring the crossover of seven Congress MLAs to the BSP in March.

The CID report was submitted to the Home Department and Mayawati made her move. She suspended the officers and by using Shukla's mother as a lever, presented Tripathi with an escape route. The family has vacillated enough, over the issue of Shukla's pregnancy, with sister Nidhi first blaming Tripathi's wife Madhumani for her murder and then retracting her statement.

The manner in which the investigators have been undermined has shaken law enforcement circles in Uttar Pradesh. The IPS Association maintained a studied silence, failing to condemn the arbitrary action against the CID officers. One member said, "If an officer like Lalka and an upright man like Yash can be suspended, the chief minister has made her intention clear-to create an atmosphere of fear and terror so that nobody dares to defy her."

In Uttar Pradesh, connections matter-if you have the right ones you can do no wrong.