Lucknow: In recent days, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been campaigning aggressively in the Delhi state elections, projecting Hindutva as a chief poll prank, and touching upon the great law and order conditions in Uttar Pradesh under his regime. But even as he attended poll rallies in the national capital, a prominent Hindutva leader was shot dead in broad day light in his own State. The incident happened on Sunday in Lucknow.
Ranjeet Bachchan (40), State chief of Vishwa Hindu Mahasabha, who was originally from Gorakhpur, used to live in a plush OCR building in Lucknow’s Hazratganj area.
Bachchan was on a morning walk when an unknown assailant walked towards him and shot him in the head. He died on the spot, police said.
The incident took place at Globe Park in Hazratganj area, barely a km away from the highly secured state head-quarters and Vidhan Sabha.
Joint Commissioner of Police Naveen Arora said Bachchan's cousin, Aditya Srivastava, was also injured in the incident and their mobile phones were snatched by the attackers, one of whom fired on them. The motive behind is murder is not clear yet.
Bachchan had celebrated his 40th birthday on Saturday and had also organised an event in support of CAA and NRC, his relatives said.
Supporters of Bachhan shouted slogans against the police outside his house.
Only a fortnight ago, the state government had introduced the Police Commissionerate system in Lucknow and Noida along the same lines as Maharashtra and other big states, replacing the Superintendent of police. The change was aimed at making policing smart and to curb rampant crimes in the big cities.
The attack on the Hindu leader comes barely three months after another Hindutva leader, Kamlesh Tiwari, the chief of the Hindu Samaj Party, was shot dead in his Lucknow office. Cops have arrested some radical Islamists in the case.
Six teams of Uttar Pradesh Police and the Crime Branch have launched a probe into the case. The police have issued a CCTV image of the suspect, and asked the public for information. A reward of Rs 50,000 has also been declared for any lead in the case.
“The assailant was on foot and approached Bachchan asking him for his cell phone to make a call. He then fired at Bachchan’s head,” cops claimed.
Arora claimed that as per initial information, Bachchan and his wife Kalindi Sharma were not in a cordial relationship and a case in this regard was registered in Gorakhpur.
"This angle is also being looked into," he said.
Bachchan was allegedly accused of rape charges pressed by his sister-in-law in 2017, sources said. He was absconding as per the police records.
Bachchan’s original name was Ranjeet Srivastava. He adopted 'Bachchan' as his last name because he was a die-hard fan of actor Amitabh Bachchan.
He was earlier associated with the Samajwadi Party, which had allotted him a government property in Lucknow to live in.
Bachchan and Kalindi had first come to the party’s attention when they undertook a nationwide bicycle yatra between 2002 and 2009 — the cycle being the SP’s election symbol.
After the SP’s electoral loss in 2017, Bachchan and Kalindi snapped ties with it, and joined hands with the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, for which Bachchan served as acting state president for a while.
By 2017 end, he had set-up his own outfit Vishwa Hindu Mahasabha, his acquaintances say.
Hanuman Birda, the vice-president of Bachchan’s organisation, said that while the CM spoke extensively about Hindutva, he had failed to protect leaders promoting the cause, and hadn’t learnt his lesson from the Kamlesh Tiwari murder case.
