We acted quickly: Yogi Adityanath disses resignation demand for Apple exec death

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday dismissed demands for his resignation over the killing of an Apple executive by police constables, saying his government has acted firmly and quickly in the case.

“They (opposition) are free to demand whatever they want. My government acted firmly and quickly in the case. An SIT has been set up. The guilty has been arrested. A thorough probe has been ordered and we will ensure that justice is done in the case,” Adityanath said in Saharanpur, where he had gone for a party meeting.

A local employee of Apple, Vivek Tiwari was shot by constables Prashant Chowdhury and Sandeep Kumar while he was going to drop his colleague Sana Khan in an SUV late on Friday night.

Opposition parties tried to corner Adityanath’s government and the state police, which have been recently accused of staging encounters and being “trigger happy”.

“The Yogi Adityanath government should resign as it is responsible for this incident,” Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav said, alleging that there have been numerous fake encounters in the state.

The Congress said the incident exposed the real character of the BJP, which had come to power on the promise of ending “goonda raj” and “jungle raj”, and asked Adityanath to resign on moral grounds.

In a tweet in Hindi, Aam Aadmi Party spokesperson Sanjay Singh said, “Earlier, the slogan was ‘Smile, you are in Lucknow. Under Yogi raj, be scared, you are in Lucknow. You can be shot in an encounter anywhere.”

However, Adityanath has asserted that action has been taken in the case. The two constables were arrested and dismissed from the job and an FIR was registered in the matter.

He has also said that the case was being probed by a SIT and could be given to the CBI if need be.

An SIT team visited the spot of the crime along with the forensic team and recreated the scene to piece together details of the shooting.

Constable Chaudhary had claimed that he had asked the victim to come out of the SUV after noticing some “suspicious activity” but Tiwari did not and instead tried to hit him with the vehicle, forcing him to open fire in self defence.

However, Tiwari’s family members questioned the promptness with which the constable fired on Tiwari, and asked the chief minister himself to come and explain to them how the police could shoot an unarmed person.

In a bid to placate the family, deputy chief minister K P Maurya and top police officers visited Tiwari’s family. Senior ministers, Ashutosh Tandon and Brajesh Pathak, and police officers also attended Tiwari’s cremation.

Maurya vowed to punish the guilty and ensure similar incident doesn’t happen again.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh, also of the BJP, had called up Adityanath and asked him to take effective action in connection with the shooting.

First Published: Sep 30, 2018 20:07 IST