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The Uttar Pradesh DGP Headquarters on Tuesday said preliminary inquiry has found that criminal elements belonging to castes other than Dalits “got mixed with protesters” and were involved in violence and arson in Muzaffarnagar, where one person was killed during Monday’s Bharat bandh. The police claimed to have identified such elements with the help of videos available, and said that efforts are on to arrest them.
Additional DGP (Law and Order) Anand Kumar told The Indian Express, “We do not rule out the possibility of a conspiracy behind violence across the state yesterday. In Muzaffarnagar, we have evidence to prove that anti-social elements with criminal cases against them got mixed with protesters and indulged in violence. They (these elements) did not belong to SC or ST communities.”
“We are scanning video footage of the incident to identity those involved,” he said. A day after former BSP MLA Yogesh Verma was arrested for allegedly sparking violence in Meerut, the police on Tuesday claimed to have sufficient evidence against him, while his wife Sunita Verma, mayor of Meerut, maintained that her husband is innocent and accused police of arresting him at the instance of the BJP government.
Internet services that were suspended in Agra and Muzaffarnagar districts were restored on Tuesday. According to the police, 550 more people have been arrested from Meerut, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Hapur, Ghaziabad, Agra and Azamgarh districts for their suspected role in Monday’s violence and arson. The police said 125 FIRs have been registered in these affected districts.
About BSP leader Yogesh Verma’s arrest, Additional DGP Kumar said, “The police are taking action against the accused on the basis of evidence. Yogesh Verma was arrested from the spot while he was trying to fuel violence. The police will invoke NSA (National Security Act; or preventive detention) against the accused arrested in these cases.”
According to Sunita, Meerut District Magistrate Anil Dhingra and SSP Manzil Saini had called her husband to Kankarkhera police station on Monday and asked him to pacify the protesters. Verma, she said, did his best.
A few hours after he returned home, he was summoned again and arrested on charges of instigating people for violence, Sunita alleged. She also claimed that a video doing the rounds on social media, which shows her husband purportedly addressing people, is fake.
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