The Uttar Pradesh government has refused to grant sanction for the prosecution of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in a decade-old communal riots case, the states top bureaucrat told the Allahabad high court on Thursday.
The riots in Gorakhpur in January 2007 were sparked allegedly after a provocative speech by Adityanath, the then local MP, over the killing of a Hindu youth in clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups during a Moharram procession. The BJP MP was arrested and remained in jail for 10 days before getting bail from a court.
An affidavit stating that sanction has been “refused” for prosecuting Yogi Adityanath in the case was filed before the high court by Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar. The sanction is needed to file a chargesheet against Yogi Adityanath under IPC Section 153-A on the charge of promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and caste. This offence is punishable with imprisonment of up to five years.
A request from the UP police to the state Home Department seeking sanction to prosecute the case where Yogi Adityanath is an accused along with four others including party MLA from Gorakhpur Radhamohan Das Agarwal is hanging fire for two years. The chief secretary had been asked to appear in person on Thursday by a May 7 order by a division bench comprising justices Ramesh Sinha and Umesh Chandra Srivastava.
In his affidavit, Bhatnagar also stated that the CB-CID, which has been investigating the case registered in connection with the riots, has proposed to submit its closure report and it will be submitted before the trial court. The development came during hearing of a petition seeking an independent probe into the violence.
The petition was filed by Parvez Parwaz, the complainant in the FIR lodged at Cantonment police station of Gorakhpur in connection with the riots and Asad Hayat, a witness in the case. The petitioners moved the high court seeking an investigation into the case by an independent agency. The petitioners counsel SFA Naqvi challenged the state governments stand in declining to grant sanction for the prosecution. “We challenged the state governments stand and submitted before the court that the chief secretary happens to be a subordinate of the chief minister, who is himself an accused. “The refusal to grant sanction is tantamount to an accused declining to prosecute himself,” Naqvi .
Naqvi said the petitioners sought permission to file a plea challenging the state governments order refusing to grant sanction for Yogi’s prosecution. The court gave permission to do so by July 7, he said.
However, the state government told the court that the case was “politically motivated” and was registered 10 months after the communal riots broke out.
