The UP government has said that it will order a probe into the incident by a retired judge.
Lakhimpur Kheri, UP:
According to the first information report released by Uttar Pradesh Police this evening, Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister Ajay Mishra, entered the protesting farmers’ meeting and opened fire, in which a farmer was killed. Based on the complaint of the farmers, the FIR said, “The act (crushing the farmers) was a well-planned conspiracy by the minister and his son.”
The arrest of Ashish Mishra, accused of murder and negligence in the FIR, is yet to come. The police have attributed the delay to being engaged in a number of issues including “interaction with farmers, postmortem and cremation”.
Based on the complaint of the farmers, the FIR states that they were protesting against the peaceful black flag on Sunday, in the hope that the visit of Union Minister and Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Maurya to the area would be blocked.
“The incident took place at around 3 pm, when Ashish Mishra along with his three vehicles along with 15-20 men headed towards the Banwaripur meeting place with weapons… Ashish fired at the crowd sitting to the left of his Thar Mahindra. Vehicle people I was crushed… Due to the firing, the 22-year-old son of farmer Sukhwinder Singh, Gurwinder, died.”
The car also crushed farmers on “both sides of the road”, following which the driver lost control and the vehicle rolled into a ditch, injuring several people, the FIR read.
The FIR states that the minister’s son, then got off and ran into the sugarcane field while continuing to fire with his gun.
Five people were killed in this alleged attack, leading to violence and arson by furious farmers. Three more people lost their lives in the violence. In the postmortem report of those who died initially, the cause of death has been given as injury, shock and brain haemorrhage.
After several days of talks, three bodies were cremated this afternoon after the police agreed to conduct a second postmortem of the alleged gunshot victim.
The farmers stayed for the postmortem at a hospital in Delhi, but agreed to get it done in Bahraich. However, the exam will be conducted by the doctors of Lucknow.
Junior Home Minister Ajay Mishra and his son at the Center have denied that they were on the spot. The minister, however, accepted that the vehicle belonged to him.
After the incident, he had said that the car crashed as people were pelting stones at the convoy, indicating the possibility of the driver losing control of the vehicle. He said that people were crushed when the vehicle overturned.
A video doing the rounds on social media – and tweeted by opposition leaders including Congress’s Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and BJP MP Varun Gandhi – shows an SUV driving a group of protesters from behind, crushing several of them. have been shown. NDTV could not verify the authenticity of the video.
SN Sabat, Additional Director General of Police, Lucknow Zone, told NDTV, “We follow a due process in every case and we will investigate the matter thoroughly.”
The state government has said that it will order a probe by a retired judge. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had tweeted, “Going to the bottom of the causes of this incident, we will expose the elements involved in the incident and take strict action against the culprits.”
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