“He was not present at the incident spot and he had not sent the party workers in the vehicles to receive the VIP. Hence, there is no conspiracy. He is just paying the price for being the Union Minister’s son.” Sitting under a peepal tree in the Lakhimpur District Court complex, so proclaims advocate Awadhesh Singh about his jailed client Ashish Mishra, the son of junior Union home minister Ajay Mishra Teni.
But not many seem to be buying this in Lakhimpur; neither the prosecution nor the local BJP. Ashish, once speculated to be the BJP’s candidate from Nighasan seat in Lakhimpur in 2002, faces an uncertain legal and political future now after being made the prime accused in the October 3 incident when farmers were run over by a Thar vehicle belonging to the minister. Some in the BJP in Lakhimpur don’t hesitate to term Ashish an “albatross around their neck”, with the Supreme Court, too, raising tough questions on whether he is being “shielded”.
Offending farmers, and Sikhs in particular, is a dicey proposition for the party in Lakhimpur and Pilibhit districts, a BJP fortress so far. The party holds all 12 Assembly seats and three Lok Sabha seats in the two districts. Sikhs form around 5% population in Pilibhit and 3% in Lakhimpur district, with seats in the latter like Palia, Gola and Nighasan having around 8% Sikh population. “This is why Varun Gandhi, MP from Pilibhit, reacted so strongly against his government. He needs our support to win,” a Sikh farmer in Nighasan argues.
The fault-lines between Sikhs and the Brahmin community in Lakhimpur seem to have become pronounced since the incident. Leaders of the All India Brahmin Mahasabha are active, saying the prosecution is favouring the Sikh community in the probe and while 13 persons have been arrested for running over the farmers, only four have been arrested for lynching three BJP workers to death. However, many Sikh farmers that News18 spoke to in Lakhimpur accused the police of favouring the Mishras, saying the BJP did not want to offend its Brahmin vote bank that has kept them in power.
“Neither are the farmers against us nor are the Sikhs. A small section of mischievous elements, the so-called farmers, are the ones against us,” Sunil Singh, the district president of BJP in Lakhimpur, told News18. A heap of publicity material lies at the BJP office here, waiting to be distributed among people. Singh terms the October 3 incident as “unfortunate” but adds that the Yogi Adityanath government has made it clear that no accused would be spared. “The law is taking its full course against Ashish Mishra,” Singh is quick to add.
Ahead of Ashish’s bail plea to be heard by the court on November 15, his counsel Awadhesh Singh told News18 here that no case will stand against his client at all. “It is all happening under media pressure. The prosecution has not established Ashish’s presence at the spot. So charges of murder against him are wrong. The prosecution is trying to find evidence against him for the criminal conspiracy angle. But we believe all the other accused in the case have told the police that they were not sent by Ashish in the cars to the spot. In fact, Ashish did not even know they had gone. So there is no conspiracy,” he argues.
A local BJP leader said no one had seen the police case diaries yet or had access to the statements of accused or witnesses recorded in court, so giving a clean chit to Ashish would be “premature”. In Ashish’s bail plea, Singh says he has argued that as per the FIR, the complainant has said Ashish was sitting on the front seat next to driver Hari Om Mishra, but video footage shows a man named Sumit Jaiswal emerging from the jeep from that side. “So the FIR is wrong. In any case, Ashish was not driving the jeep in any event nor had he ever sent any workers in the vehicles to receive the VIP,” Singh adds.
The prosecution has, however, neither bought this argument nor Ashish’s explanations about his location between 2:34pm and 3:30pm that day. The incident happened around 3pm. “We have given video and photographic evidence along with sworn affidavits of people establishing Ashish’s presence at his village wrestling venue at 2:51pm, 2:58pm, 3:10pm and 3:29pm,” Singh argues. He says the bail plea also argues that the crowd had attacked the Thar vehicle with sticks, damaging the glasses and blurring the vision of the driver.
The latest blow to Ashish is a forensic report confirming that a gun belonging to him was indeed fired recently. “Ashish had said the gun has not been fired for a year. This too has been proven wrong,” a local BJP leader said.
His lawyer says a licensed weapon can be fired in the air in self-defence but quickly adds that police have no proof to say the weapon was fired on November 3 and no autopsy report has confirmed a gunshot. For the BJP, however, it is perception that matters more in election season, something that seems adverse right now.
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