Lakhimpur Kheri violence: Ashish Mishra's crime grave, heinous; UP govt to SC

The Uttar Pradesh government Thursday opposed in the Supreme Court the bail plea of Union Minister Ajay Kumar Mishras son who is one of the accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence caseAdditional Advocate General for Uttar Pradesh Garima Prashad told a bench of Justice Surya Kant and Justice J K Maheshwari that the crime is graveIt is a grave and heinous crime and granting bail will send a wrong signal to society she said after the court asked her what was the ground for opposing the bail pleaThe top court said about the grave and heinous crime there are two versions and it cannot comment on any of the versionsWe are taking prima facie view that he is involved and he is an accused and not innocent Is it the states case that he has attempted to destroy evidence the bench askedTo this the additional advocate general replied That has not happened till nowSenior advocate Dushyant Dave appearing for those opposing the bail plea said grant of bail will send a terrible message to society Its a conspiracy and a wellplanned murder I will show from the charge sheet He is the son of a powerful man being represented by a powerful lawyer he saidSenior advocate Mukul Rohatgi appearing for Mishra strongly opposed Daves submission and said What is this Who is powerful We are appearing every day Can this be a condition to not grant bailRohatgi submitted that his client has been in custody for more than a year and the way the trial is going it will take seven to eight years to complete it He stated that Jagjeet Singh who is the complainant in the case is not an eyewitness and his complaint is just based on hearsayJagjit Singh is the complainant and he is not an eyewitness I am surprised that when there is a large number of people saying we ran over people mercilessly an FIR is registered on the version of a person who is not an eyewitness he saidMy client got bail in the first instance This is not a cock and bull story and there is truth in my story Rohatgi said adding that his client is not a criminal and there are no past recordsHearing in the matter is underwayAlso Read BJP has started counting its days Akhilesh YadavOn October 3 2021 eight people were killed in Lakhimpur Kheri districts Tikunia in a violence that erupted when farmers were protesting then Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Mauryas visit to the areaAccording to Uttar Pradesh Police FIR four farmers were mowed down by an SUV in which Ashish Mishra was seated Following the incident a driver and two BJP workers were allegedly lynched by angry farmers A journalist also died in the violenceOn December 6 last year a trial court had framed charges against Ashish Mishra and 12 others for the alleged offences of murder criminal conspiracy and others in the case of death of the protesting farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri paving the way for the start of the trialA total of 13 accused including Ashish Mishra have been charged under IPC sections 147 and 148 related to rioting 149 unlawful assembly 302 murder 307 attempt to murder 326 voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons or means 427 mischief and 120B punishment for criminal conspiracy and section 177 of the Motor Vehicle ActThe other 12 accused are Ankit Das Nandan Singh Bisht Latif Kale Satyam alias Satya Prakash Tripathi Shekhar Bharti Sumit Jaiswal Ashish Pandey Lavkush Rana Shishu Pal Ullas Kumar alias Mohit Trivedi Rinku Rana and Dharmendra Banjara All of them are in jailWhile hearing the matter on December 12 last year the apex court had asked the state government which opposed the bail plea of Ashish Mishra terming the offence very grave to file an affidavit concerning the status of the case lodged over the killing of three occupants of the SUVThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever