Lakhimpur Kheri: Bail pleas of Ashish Mishra, two others rejected
Union minister of state for home Ajay Mishra Teni’s son Ashish Mishra is the key accused in the violence that claimed eight lives in Lakhimpur Kheri on October 3
The Lakhimpur Kheri district and sessions court on Monday rejected the bail pleas of Union minister of state for home Ajay Kumar Mishra Teni’s son Ashish Mishra and two others in the Lakhimpur Kheri violence case, senior prosecution officials said.
Ashish Mishra is the key accused in the violence that claimed eight lives on October 3 under the Tikunia police station limits of Lakhimpur Kheri. He was arrested on October 9 and is in jail.
They said the court rejected the bail pleas after hearing arguments by the defence as well as the prosecution.
District government counsel (DGC) Arvind Tripathi confirmed that the bail applications of Ashish Mishra and two others, Luv Kush Rana and Ashish Pandey, were rejected. He said district and sessions judge Mukesh Mishra stated in the order that the investigation is still on in the incident of mowing down of farmers by a vehicle and so the court did not find any genuine reason to release the key accused on bail.
The prosecution stated that the statements of 60 eyewitnesses have confirmed the presence of Ashish Mishra at the violence site, he said. The prosecution also mentioned the ballistic report confirming firing from Ashish Mishra’s firearm.
Last week, a forensic report confirmed that firing was done from the licensed weapons of three accused —Ashish Mishra, his friend Ankit Das and his private gunner Latif alias Kaale —in recent times but there was no clarity as to when and where the firing was done. An official had said the report was not sufficient to say that the firing was done by the same weapons at the violence site as no one suffered a bullet injury in the incident.
DGC Arvind Tripathi said defence counsel Salil Srivastava, Chandra Mohan and Awadhesh Dubey maintained that Ashish Mishra was not present at the site of the Lakhimpur Kheri violence. He said the defence counsel denied Mishra’s involvement in firing at the incident. The ballistic report did not confirm firing from Mishra’s firearm at the incident site, they said.
He said the district and sessions court had earlier deferred the hearing on Ashish Mishra’s bail plea on the prosecution’s request to consider the ballistics report, which was awaited then, on November 2. Earlier, Ashish Mishra’s bail application was rejected by the chief judicial magistrate’s court on October 13.
Ashish Mishra, Ashish Pandey and Lavkush Rana are among the 13 accused, identified and arrested during investigation of the first FIR regarding the mowing down of four farmers by a vehicle after which the violence erupted near Banbirpur village under Tikunia police station limits on October 3. In the same FIR, the other accused include Sumit Jaiswal, Ankit Das, Shekhar Bharti, Latif alias Kale, Mohit Trivedi, Rinku Rana, Dharmendra, Nandan Singh Bisht, Sishu Pal, Satya Prakash Tripathi alias Satyam. All the 13 accused are in judicial custody.
The second FIR was lodged in connection with the violence during which four others, including two BJP workers, a journalist and the driver of the car, which allegedly mowed down the farmers, were killed.
