A bench comprising Justices Amar Saran and R N Mishra noted “station officer Hoshiyar Singh had held long and repeated telephonic conversations with Vibha Tiwari and sporadic talks with MLA Shekhar Tiwari”.

Besides Vibha Tiwari, the petitions for stay on arrest were moved by Hoshiyar Singh and Manjul Pandey.

The bench, which had reserved its order last Friday, delivered it on Tuesday after perusing Gupta’s case diary.

During the perusal of the diary, the court found that the postmortem report of Gupta showed 23 injuries, including contusions, multiple abraded contusions, lacerated wounds and electrocution marks.

According to the prosecution, Vibha Tiwari wasn’t a housewife but the president of a zila panchayat. Besides the telephonic conversations between her and Singh, other circumstances also suggested that she was giving instructions on how to conceal the evidence.

“It is time that stringent steps are taken for breaking this vicious nexus between the police and the politicians and their goons and for taking strong steps to ensure that investigation becomes fair and honest,” the bench observed.

The High Court said directions to separate law and order and the investigative wings of the police and others related issues to make the process more objective were issued by the Supreme Court in the Prakash Singh and others versus the Union of India.

It directed the registry to send copies of the order within a week to the session judge, chief judicial magistrate and the Auraiya superintendent of police.