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After ballistics report, SIT focuses on accused’s location
The official said investigators were looking into the cell phone locations and call details report of the three accused, who are currently in jail.
Officials probing the Lakhimpur Kheri incident are trying to establish the presence of the three accused, Ashish Mishra, his friend Ankit Das and his private gunner Latif, at the spot of the violence after a forensic report confirmed that shots were fired from their licensed weapons, said a member of the special investigation team (SIT) on Wednesday.
The official said investigators were looking into the cell phone locations and call details report of the three accused, who are currently in jail. He said the SIT had also found some unclaimed mobile phones from the site and sent them for further examination.
He said the ballistics report of the three weapons—a rifle, a repeater gun, and a pistol belonging to three accused— confirmed that firing was done from these weapons in recent times.
But he added that there was no clarity on when and where the firing was done.
He said the ballistic report was not sufficient to say firing was done by the same weapons at the site of the violence. He said the post-mortem examination of the four farmers, who died in the incident, had ruled out bullet injuries.
He also said the ballistic report of one more weapon recovered from another co-accused, Satya Prakash Tripathi, was awaited.
“Although Ankit Das and his gunner Latif had mentioned in their statements that they fired in the air to escape from the spot when the mob attacked them after a convoy of cars ran over a group of protesting farmers, Ashish Mishra had maintained that he was not present at the violence site,” he said.
The SIT had recovered the weapons from Ashish Mishra, Ankit Das, and Latif days after the violence. Ashish Mishra is the son of Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’.
Ashish Mishra, who has maintained he was not present at the site of the violence, was arrested on October 9. Das and Latif were taken into custody five days later.
The farmers alleged there was firing during the violence and that a farmer from Bahraich died of a bullet wound. But two post-mortem examinations of the farmer ruled out bullet injuries.
The post-mortem reports of the eight, who were killed in the incident, concluded they died of shock, excessive bleeding, and haemorrhage caused by ante-mortem injuries and that none of them received bullet injuries.
Four farmers, three Bharatiya Janata Party workers, and a journalist were killed in the violence in the Tikunia area of Lakhimpur Kheri district on October 3.
Farmers say a car belonging to Mishra ran them over while the accused blame farmers for torching vehicles and killing three people.
