Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra, who is under pressure to resign over his son Ashish’s involvement in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence, has landed in yet another controversy on Wednesday.
In a video, which went viral on social media, Mishra is purportedly seen hurling abuse at a reporter and calling the media “chor (thieves)”. Soon after the video went viral, Mishra was summoned to New Delhi. He immediately left for the national Capital.
The incident occurred outside Mother Child Care Hospital in Lakhimpur district, where reporters cornered Mishra as he inaugurated the facility’s new oxygen plant. When a journalist asked him about the SIT adding charges in the Lakhimpur Kheri case, the Minister at once lost his temper and asked the journalist “Dimag kharab hai?” (Are you mad?).
He tried to shut down the mobile phone of another journalist who was recording the incident.
The viral video shows the Minister using expletives and threatening media persons present there before walking off. He referred to journalists as “chor”. “These people have no shame. Can’t they see this is a hospital, so many people are here,” the MoS can be heard saying, adding that his son is innocent and is being framed. The BJP leader gets into a verbal altercation with a reporter and in his temper he even lunges at someone, the video shows. He eventually leaves in a huff.
Earlier in the day, the Lok Sabha proceedings were adjourned till Thursday as the Opposition members raised slogans and waved placards demanding the sacking of Mishra.
In Lucknow also, both Samajwadi Party and Congress staged a dharna outside the State Assembly demanding immediate removal Mishra.
On Tuesday, a court allowed the SIT probing the Lakhimpur Kheri violence to add the charge of attempt to murder in the FIR against the accused, including the Minister’s son, after the inquiry team said it was a “pre-planned conspiracy”. The UP Government’s SIT probing the Lakhimpur Kheri violence said in a court submission on Tuesday that the violence was the outcome of a “planned conspiracy” and not a result of criminal negligence as claimed earlier. During the hearing, the magistrate agreed to replace lesser charges like causing death by negligence with the more serious one of an attempt to murder (section 307) against Ashish Mishra and others in connection with the death of eight people, including four farmers, in Lakhimpur Kheri on October 3. The FIR against all the accused already mentions IPC sections 302 (murder), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting, armed with a deadly weapon), 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of the offence committed in prosecution of common object) and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
The SIT had urged the chief judicial magistrate to replace IPC sections 279 (rash driving/riding), 338 (causing grievous injuries by negligence) and 304A (causing death by a rash and negligent act) with IPC section 307 (attempt to murder) among others. It also recommended the promulgation of IPC sections 326 (voluntarily causing injuries by dangerous weapons), 34 (acts by several persons with common intentions) and sections 3/25/30 of the Arms Act in warrants of the 13 accused.
The violence in Lakhimpur Kheri’s Tikunia broke out when a group of farmers was protesting the visit of Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya to Union Minister Mishra’s native place and it left four farmers, a local journalist, two BJP workers and a driver dead and several injured. Two FIRs were lodged in this connection. The special investigators, while investigating the violence, had identified and arrested 13 people in FIR number 219, including Ashish Mishra, Sumit Jaiswal, Ankit Das and others, while in FIR number 220, four people were identified and arrested. All the accused are in judicial custody.