On 3 October 2021, there was a wrestling tournament in a village of Uttar Pradesh, India in which the chief guest was Keshav Prasad Maurya (Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, and a member of BJP). When farmers got to know about it, they decided to go there and protest.
8 am: around 300 farmers reached Tikona, a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district to protest against the visit of Deputy Chief Minister, Keshav Prasad Maurya. Around 10 am, they entered a Local playground and tried to take over the helipad, so it wasn’t possible to land a helicopter on the helipad.
So now protestors suspected that they will come via road, so they started gathering on road to protest. Now to prevent this, another route was provided so that KP Maurya and Ajay Mishra (Minister of States in Ministry of Home Affairs and a member of BJP) could join the event.
They went to the event via another route, joined the event and were returning.
According to protestors this change in route hurt the ego of Ashish Mishra (Son of Ajay Mishra). So he came back to the farmers along with his bouncers and SUVs to teach them a lesson.
Around 2:30 pm, according to protestors, a convoy of three SUVs from BJP made their way from Lakhimpur to Tikona. One of the SUVs was driven by Ashish Mishra which rammed over protestors. After which farmers too got angry and violence took place. In total 8 deaths were reported, 4 farmers, 3 BJP workers, and 1 journalist.
Few videos of incidents surfaced on the internet, in one of the videos it was seen that farmers/protestors were brutally beating BJP workers and then rolled over and burnt their cars. But according To Ajay Mishra, he and his son were not present at that moment it was the farmers who began the violence.
While the cars were on the way to pick up Ajay Mishra from the event, protestors got violent and started throwing stones at the car, due to which the driver lost his control and ran the vehicle over farmers. After which farmers got more violent and started beating BJP workers present in cars.
And that’s what till now has been shown by the mainstream media too, videos showing protestors beating BJP workers, rolling down a car that rammed farmers and burning it. But then comes another.
Which changed the complete perspective of the whole incident?
A video surfaced on the internet in which it was seen that farmers were on their way, protesting peacefully on the road but then suddenly from behind the SUV came and ran over them. According to Samyukta Kishan Morcha, the violence took place when one of the farmers was shot dead by Ajay Mishra’s son Ashish Mishra.
After this many opposition leaders were arrested which includes congress politician Priyanka Gandhi who was kept on house arrest while she was on her way to meet the family of farmers who died in this incident. However, no action till now was taken against the main accused Ashish Mishra.
After which Supreme Court ask the UP government to file a status report and conduct a strong investigation on this case. Supreme Court even said that the investigation done was not satisfactory.
9 October 2021, finally Ashish Mishra (main accused) was arrested and kept under Judiciary Custody.
Currently, 6 people are arrested by the police in connection with the incident. Despite Ashish Mishra’s arrest, most villagers support him as innocent. On this, a farmer said that “no one will say anything against Ashish or anyone from his family even after he killed four people”.
Now it’s currently not possible to confirm whether Ashish Mishra is guilty or not, it can only be proved after the trial, cause there are still many questions unanswered like why anyone will run a car over people without any reason, and that too knowing that it’s BJP’s ruling area and it will be visible by everyone.
Secondly, if another route was provided by the police to prevent protestors and Ashish Mishra face to face encounters, why Ashish Mishra still chose to go via the same route where farmers were protesting?
Questions are many, and answers will take an in-depth investigation. Hope things get clear and justice is to be served.
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