GORAKHPUR RIOTS CASE PLEA DISMISSED
ALLAHABAD: The Allahabad high court on Thursday dismissed a petition challenging the order that refused sanction to prosecute chief minister Yogi Adityanath and other accused in the Gorakhpur riots case of 2007.
The court said it did not find any procedural irregularity in the order of refusal to grant sanction to prosecute the accused named in the case. The bench comprising justices Krishna Murari and Akhilesh Chandra Sharma delivered the judgment on a petition filed by Parvez Parwaz and Asad Hayat.
While Parwaz is a complainant in the FIR, Hayat is a witness in the riots case. The petitioners had been seeking an investigation by an independent agency on apprehension that CB-CID, the state government agency, that is probing the case, may not be impartial. The court, while rejecting this claim, observed: “From perusal of the case diary and in-depth analysis of the investigation carried out, as reflected from the case diary, we do not find that there was any failure on the part of the investigating agency to perform its statutory duty of making investigation in a fair, impartial and independent manner and thus, we see no good ground to transfer the investigation to some other agency.”
However, even while the petition for independent probe was pending, principal secretary (home), on May 3 last year, refused prosecution sanction to the investigating agency, which was challenged by the petitioner on the ground that since Yogi was now CM , hence refusal by state officials to grant sanction was illegal as one cannot be judge in his own case.
The court, however, observed: “The order refusing sanction has been passed by the competent authority as per rules after due application of mind and the same is not lightly to be dealt with and flimsy technicalities cannot be allowed to sacrifice the sacrosanct and sacred act for grant of sanction intended to provide safeguard against vexatious prosecution.” In the FIR lodged at Cantt tonment police station of Gorakhpur, it was alleged that then MP Yogi, then mayor of Gorakhpur Anju Chaudhri, then MLA Radha Mohan Agarwal and another person had incited communal violence and riots in Gorakhpur January 27, 2007.