New Delhi, October 11
In a significant development with respect to the October 3 violence in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri area, a local court sent accused Ashish Mishra, the son of junior home minister Ajay Mishra, to three days of police custody on Monday.
Chief Judicial Magistrate, Lakhimpur Kheri, Chinta Ram remanded Ashish to three-day police custody after the prosecution sought a 14-day remand noting that the accused had not yet cooperated in the matter and had been unable to satisfactorily answer queries about his location at the time of the crime.
Speaking to The Tribune, senior prosecution officer on the case, SP Yadav said: “The CJM had remanded the accused to three-day custody subject to conditions such as fair investigation, etc. We had sought a 14-day remand. The remand period starts at 10 am on October 12 until 10 am on October 15”.
The case is being investigated by the SIT headed by DG Upendra Agarwal.
Ashish is named as a prime accused in one of the two FIRs in the case, which says he was seated on the left front seat of a Mahindra Thar, which was the first of the three SUVs that mowed down protesters in the area on October 3.
The FIR also says that Ashish was carrying a gun and escaped into the fields firing shots.
It adds that Ashish was accompanied by 15-20 persons and rammed into protesting farmers under a “planned conspiracy.”
Although Ashish and his father Ajay Mishra have claimed to be absent from the crime scene, the former has been unable to prove his whereabouts at the time of the crime that killed eight people—five of them allegedly mowed down by the SUVs and the rest allegedly lynched to death by angry agitators.
