The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its verdict on the bail granted to Union Minister Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra during the hearing on the Lakhimpur Kheri case. Senior advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for the UP government, admitted that it was a serious offence. However, he said that the accused Ashish Mishra did not run away.
The SC, while hearing the petition filed against the bail of Ashish Mishra, referred to the High Court order and asked how the judge can look into the postmortem report in detail? The State Government also assured during the hearing that proper protection has been provided to all the witnesses in the case, which was claimed by the lawyers of the petitioners.
Earlier, the SC had directed the UP government to respond by April 4 on two reports of the retired judge supervising the SIT’s probe into the cancellation of Ashish’s bail. The court had said that the monitoring judge had written to the state government to cancel the bail granted by the Allahabad High Court to Ashish Mishra in the case.
Eight people were killed during violence in Lakhimpur Kheri on October 3 last year when farmers were protesting against the visit of Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya to the area. According to the Uttar Pradesh Police FIR, four farmers were crushed by an SUV in which Ashish Mishra was sitting. Following the incident, angry farmers allegedly thrashed the driver and two Bharatiya Janata Party workers to death.