Announcing ‘token reward’ for multi-billion rupee scammer raises questions about govt’s seriousness: Akhilesh Yadav

Samajwadi Party National President Akhilesh Yadav has accused the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh of concealing its role in the deadly codeine cough syrup scam.

He said that announcing a “token reward” of a few thousand rupees for a scammer involved in a multi-billion rupee scam raises questions about the government’s seriousness and is a mockery of the public.

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Posting on his social media account, Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the dispensation that distributed crores of rupees worth of vehicles as “rewards” to those involved in this racket, whose details have not been made public despite repeated demands, can spend any amount of money to suppress news about itself.

He sarcastically asked whether those same vehicles had been seized by bulldozers.

The SP president alleged that the BJP is continuously lying about this “mega-scam” related to children’s deaths and drug addiction. He alleged that even during a major religious event like the ‘Prayagraj Mahakumbh’, false statements were made about the death toll, so ”how can one expect the truth about the deaths related to the fake and adulterated syrup racket operating during their rule?”

Akhilesh Yadav clearly stated that the claim that “no one died from the syrup” is an outright lie and the BJP government has become a “government of falsehoods”. He demanded an impartial investigation into the entire matter, strict action against those responsible for the deaths, and that all documents related to the distribution of rewards and vehicles be made public.

The “codeine syrup scandal” refers to two primary issues: the abuse and illicit trafficking of codeine-based cough syrups as narcotics and a series of international mass poisonings involving contaminated cough syrups (which do not necessarily contain codeine but have become linked to the scandal due to regulatory failures in the same industry).