Express News Service
LUCKNOW: Ashish Mishra, the prime accused of Lakhimpur Kheri violence and son of junior Union minister Ajay Mishra, has been sent to three-day police remand with conditions, said SP Yadav, prosecution advocate on Monday.
A remand petition for the police custody of Ashish was heard on Monday. He was sent to 14-day judicial custody by a local court after he was arrested late on Saturday night.
On Saturday, he was grilled for around 12 hours in connection with the Lakhimpur Kheri violence in which eight persons, including four farmers, were killed. A medical team examined Ashish Mishra in the crime branch office in Lakhimpur Kheri after which he was taken to be produced before a judicial magistrate, who sent him to custody, prosecution advocate Yadav said.
The three conditions laid by the court for police remand include his medical check-up every time taken out for interrogation by the SIT, no torture by the cops during interrogation, and also permission to his advocate to watch him from a distance during the interrogation.
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Though Ashish kept insisting that he was not in the car that rammed into the protestors from behind, which led to the violence that killed eight persons, including farmers and a journalist, police authorities claimed they had evidence to show his presence at the spot.
It was Ashish’s Mahindra Thar SUV that mowed into the farmers around 3 pm last Sunday when farmers were protesting against the visit of UP deputy chief minister Keshav Maurya to Lakhimpur Kheri. While he ducked questions about his role in the ghastly incident, sources claimed he failed to provide satisfactory evidence about his whereabouts between 2.36 pm and 3.30 pm on that fateful Sunday.
Ashish claimed he was attending a dangal (wrestling match) at his ancestral village Banbirpur at that time and furnished videos and affidavits of 10 people to corroborate his claim, but the SIT was not impressed.
“I was not present at the site of the incident,” was his standard response to most questions, adding: “I came to know about it later.”
But when asked about the bullet cartridges the police found in his car that were burnt by the angry protestors at the site, he was evasive. He also did not provide satisfactory answers to questions on the licensed arms he was carrying and who all were with him, sources said. The name he mentioned was of Hari Om, who, he claimed was driving the SUV.
