PLEA AGAINST ADITYANATH DISMISSED IN GORAKHPUR RIOTS CASE
The Allahabad high court dismissed on Thursday a petition seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe to prosecute the Uttar Pradesh chief minister in a 2007 riot case that had left one person dead.
Adityanath, who was the parliamentarian for Gorakhpur at the time, was one of the accused in the case.
The court said it did not find any procedural irregularity in the order of refusal to grant sanction to prosecute the accused.
The bench of 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 registered in 2008, Hayat is a witness in the case. The petitioners had been seeking an investigation by an independent agency amid fears that the CB-CID, a state government agency probing the case, may not be impartial.
However, even when the petition for an independent inquiry was pending, the state’s principal secretary for the home department refused on May 3 last year prosecution sanction to the investigating agency.
In the FIR lodged at Cantonment police station of Gorakhpur, it was alleged that Yogi, then mayor of Gorakhpur Anju Chaudhri, legislator Radha Mohan Agarwal and another person had incited communal violence and riots in Gorakhpur in January 2007.