Seven police teams to probe Lucknow court blast

LUCKNOW: Soon after the low intensity explosion at the Lucknow civil court, advocate Sanjeev Lodhi, who purportedly suffered splinter injuries, lodged an FIR at the Wazirganj police station against Bar Association general secretary Jeetu Yadav and his six aides, who have been charged with attempt to murder.
Barely had the ripples subsided on court campus, when Lodhi and his supporters launched a retaliatory attack on Jeetu Yadav in the Bar Association office near the Collectorate, inflicting serious injuries on him and aides. A counter FIR was lodged with the Qaiserbagh police against Lodhi and his aides, said SHO Deenanath Mishra.
Advocate Suresh Pandey, who has present in court when the bomb went off, said, “At least 12 men in black and civvies approached Lodhi and hurled three bombs at him. One of the bombs exploded injuring four lawyers.”
Joint commissioner of police (law and order) Naveen Arora said, “The incident was a fallout of rivalry between two groups of lawyers. Nobody heard any sound of a blast or gunfire. Forensic teams and bomb squads were pressed into action. Seven teams have been formed to probe the incident.”
After the bloody shootout inside a Bijnor courtroom and a suicide attempt in Mainpuri court late last year, Allahabad High Court directed the state government to hammer out a foolproof security cover for courts across the state. The directives are, however, yet to be implemented.
In the first FIR, advocate Lodhi said, he was talking to a colleague outside his chamber around 11.50am when a group of men, including a few in black, hurled three crude bombs at him. He accused Yadav and 16 others of trying to kill him due to enmity.
Talking to TOI, Lodhi said, he had lodged a complaint of corruption against some judicial officers. “Yadav at the behest of these tainted officers began pressuring me to withdraw the complaint. He went to a colleague’s house on Wednesday and issued threats. I rushed to confront Yadav, who threatened to kill me. And 24 hours later, I was attacked in the civil court campus,” he said.
Station House Officer, Wazirganj, Deepak Dubey, said, “We recovered two objects which appear to be crude bombs and have sent these for forensic test. We are verifying if there was a blast.”
Later on Thursday, a third FIR was registered. This time, another advocate and associate of Lodhi, Shyam Singh Chauhan, lodged a complaint against Yadav and his aides at Qaiserbagh police station. Chauhan claimed Yadav and his 12 associates had assaulted him Bar Association’s office at 2.15pm on Thursday.