2007 Gorakhpur riots: Allahabad HC to decide on CBI probe on Adityanath’s role

NEW DELHI: The Allahabad high court is today scheduled to pronounce its verdict on a petition seeking that the CBI investigate Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityanath's involvement in a 2007 Gorakhpur riots case. Here is all you need to know about the case:

* In 2007, Adityanath – then just a Lok Sabha MP - was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace and violating prohibitory orders after he, along with his supporters, gathered to mourn the killing of a man in clashes between two communities.

* Following his arrest, his supporters from the Hindu Yuva Vahini, an extremist Hindu youth group, founded by Adityanath, ransacked public property and torched a train compartment reserved for the physically challenged in Krishi Express. A bus was also set ablaze in Deoria, even as police lathi-charged mobs in Azamgarh and Kushinagar.

* On November 2, 2008, an FIR was lodged in Cantonment police station of Gorakhpur. In the FIR, it was alleged that Adityanath, then Gorakhpur Mayor Anju Chaudhri, then MLA Radha Mohan Agarwal and another person had incited communal violence and riots in Gorakhpur in 2007 through “hate speeches”.

* Adityanath, who heads the sprawling Gorakhnath temple beside having been a five-time BJP MP from Gorakhpur, was named in the FIR, along with Chaudhari and Agarwal, according to PTI.

* Parvez Parwaz, who was a complainant in the FIR, along with Asad Hayat, a witness in the case, filed a petition in Allahabad High Court in 2008.

* The duo requested the Allahabad high court to direct an investigation by an independent agency into the FIR on the ground that "one cannot be a judge in his own case".

* However, ignoring this legal point, the government on May 3, 2017, refused to grant sanction to prosecute Adityanath, who was by then UP CM, contending that the petitioners need not have approached the court because other remedies, such as filing a protest petition, were available.

* The government denied the permission to prosecute the CM on the grounds that the video recording of the purported hate speech of Adityanath was tampered with.

* Adityanath, who is booked under IPC 153A for making a hate speech, could be tried only after his prosecution is sanctioned by the state government.