Days after the Allahabad High Court granted bail to Ashish Mishra, the son of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra and the main accused in Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, the families of the deceased farmers on Monday challenged the bail order in the Supreme Court.
Four months after being arrested in connection with the case in which eight people including four farmers were killed, Mishra was last week granted bail by the high court. The bail order has already been challenged by two lawyers — CS Panda and Shiv Kumar Tripathi — who moved the application under the suo moto. The petition is still pending in the top court.
The application challenged the high court’s bail order of February 10 on the ground that the accused’s father is yet to be examined by the SIT and this itself created reasonable apprehension of threat to life in the minds of the victims and witnesses of the case.
On October 3 last year, a convoy of three SUVs, including a Thar owned by Ajay Mishra, ran over a group of protesting farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri. Four farmers and a journalist were killed and several others were injured. In the violence that followed, two BJP leaders and the driver of the Thar vehicle were killed.
The SIT had arrested 13 persons, including Ashish Mishra, for the killing of farmers and a journalist. On January 3, the SIT filed a chargesheet against 14, including Ashish Mishra and his uncle, Virendra Shukla.
The SIT in its charge sheet had alleged the killing to be “pre-planned”. According to them, Mishra came in a Thar SUV along with a convoy of three-four cars and mowed down protesting farmers, gathered to protest the arrival of UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.
Meanwhile, farmer leader Rakesh Tikait has said that Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) will approach the Supreme Court over the Lakhimpur Kheri violence.