Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the decision to challenge the grant of bail by the Allahabad High Court to Ashish Mishra, son of Union minister Ajay Mishra, in connection with the Lakhimpur Kheri violence that left eight people, including four farmers, dead is pending consideration before the relevant authorities.
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In its reply affidavit filed on the appeal filed by family members of the victims of Lakhimpur Keri violence, the state government said that the Allahabad High Court order as well as its counter-affidavit would demonstrate it has vehemently opposed the bail application of Mishra. ‘The same clearly demonstrates that the Respondent No.1 (Ashish Mishra) Bail application was vehemently opposed by the State, and any averments to the contrary in the SLP are false and merit to be rejected. Furthermore, the Impugned Order being of February 10, 2022, the limitation period against the same is still running, and the decision to file SLP against the same, is pending consideration before the relevant authorities, it said.
The state government said that an incident on March 10, in which one of the witnesses in the Lakhimpur violence case was beaten by some miscreants, resulted in the registration of the Case being sought to be ‘conflated and connected’ with the farmer deaths of October 3, 2021. In this regard, it is submitted that the investigation of a said incident of March 10, 2022, and Case Crime No…has revealed that the same is not related at all to the FIRs pertaining to the October 3, 2021 incident, it said. Giving detail about the recent incident, the state government said that as per the Petitioners’ case, one Diljot Singh, son of Jarnail Singh, was beaten by miscreants on March 10, 2022.
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‘As per the FIR registered by Diljot Singh, the attackers threatened him saying that Respondent No. I (Ashish Mishra) am out on bail and the ruling party has also won the election and that they will see to him. However, during the course of the investigation, Diljot Singh’s Gunner Manoj Singh (assigned to protect him as per this Court’s Orders) , as well as 3 independent eyewitnesses to the incident, were examined, and all 4 persons stated that the incident occurred suddenly due to an altercation between Diljot Singh and the attacker over the throwing of Gulal (dry colors of Holi) on him”, the affidavit said. Referring to the Section 161 CrpC statements of the state government said that as per the eyewitnesses, on March 10, at around 8.15 pm, Diljot Singh came towards the Primary School near Danga, on a tractor-trolley laden with sugarcane.