Mathura violence: First heads roll as Akhilesh govt shunts out DM, SSP

Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav took to twitter to announce the transfers. “#UPCM@yadavakhilesh instructions, DM/SSP Mathura has been transferred. New incumbents will join soon,” he said in a tweet.

[related-post]

Later, an official statement was issued saying DM Rajesh Kumar has been replaced by Special Secretary PWD Nikhil Chandra Shukla. Kumar has been put on the wait list. Also, SSP Rakesh Kumar Singh has been replaced by SP Jalaun, Babloo Kumar, the statement said.

Meanwhile, the Aligarh Divisional Commissioner, Chandra Kant, who is heading an administrative probe to look into the circumstances leading to the Thursday’s incident, said he will resume his inquiry next week. “We shall hold next phase of inquiry next week. The exact date and timings would be communicated later,” he said.

Earlier in the day, in a report it sent to the Union Home Ministry, the state government rejected BJP’s charge that there was political pressure on police to not evict encroachers from Jawahar Bagh and reiterated that the violence there was the result of the failure of local authorities.

Links to Naxals have not been ruled out given the quantity and type of weapons used by the encroachers, who are members of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, an outfit that claimed to owe allegiance to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

The state government admitted that the clashes between the police and over 3,000 squatters belonging to the cult was the result of the failure of the local police to assess the situation. It said that the police was “forced to act” before they “could make adequate preparations” following an attack by the cult members.

According to reports, a police contingent led by SP (City) Mukul Dwivedi had gone to Jawahar Bagh on June 2 for a recce when it came under attack. In the clashes that ensued, 29 people, including Dwivedi and the SHO of the local Farah police station Santosh Kumar, were killed. Cult leader Ram Vriksh Yadav was also found dead.

The members of the obscure cult were heavily armed and outnumbered the police force, which went to evict the encroachers from the Jawahar Bagh park last week on a court order, the report said, noting that grenades and automatic weapons were freely used against the police.

Chief minister’s uncle, Shivpal Yadav, who is a minister, has been accused by BJP of being a patron of the cult, which moved into the 280-acre park in 2014. On Sunday, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the law and order situation in UP has collapsed and asked it to write to the Centre to institute a CBI probe on the clashes.

The ruling party in UP, meanwhile, hit back accusing BJP of “indulging in “politics over dead bodies”. Senior SP leader Ambika Chaudhary alleged that Naxalites from Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha were staying at Jawahar Bagh along with the encroachers.

“The intelligence network of the Centre, it is obvious, must be in the know of things. Then, why did it not share the information with the state government. Therefore, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh should resign,” said Chaudhary.

Chaudhary said the state government has already sent a “factual report” to the Centre on the Jawahar Bagh incident and it would soon be known, “who was funding the encroachers”.

Meanwhile, IG (Law and Order) H R Sharma told reporters that a team of five doctors conducted postmortem on 19 bodies, including that of Ram Vriksh, before he was cremated here.

Police did not hand over the body of Ram Vriksh to one of his council members, Tarni Kumar Gautam, who had came to claim it, police said.

Earlier, some sants in Vrindavan opposed the district administration’s decision to cremate the bodies in there, saying they were “terrorists” and had killed good police officers. “We shall not allow the pious land of Vrindavan to become un-pious,” sants, led by Mahant Fuldol Maharaj and Mahamandaleshwar Naval Giri Maharaj, said. They, however, later agreed after senior police officers intervened.

Meanwhile, bodies of two people were identified by their family members. “One of them has been identified as Finku Chauhan, resident of Ambapur in Azamgarh, while the other body was that of 40-year-old Mahesh Jaiswal of Gay Ghat in Siddhartha Nagar district,” officials said.

WITH PTI inputs