The Supreme Court on Monday reserved its order on the plea of the victims' kin to cancel the bail granted to prime accused Ashish Mishra, son of Union Minister of State for Home Ajay Mishra 'Teni', in the Lakhimpur killings on October 3 last year. A special bench of Chief Justice of India NV Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli referred to the Allahabad High Court verdict granting the bail and questioned what was the necessity of the detailed examination of evidence such as postmortem report. “We are hearing a bail matter; we do not want to prolong it. This way of going into merits and going into wounds is unnecessary for the question of bail,” the bench observed.
Senior advocate Dushayant Dave and lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for farmers, sought cancellation of the bail alleging that the high court overlooked the probe report and went by the FIR while granting the relief to the accused. On March 16, the top court had sought responses of the Uttar Pradesh government and Ashish Mishra on a plea challenging the grant of bail to him.
The state government termed the offence as grave and said that all the witnesses have been granted protection. It also stressed that Mishra is not a “flight risk” as claimed in the petition that he may escape from India. Senior Advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for the Uttar Pradesh government said, “It is a grave offence but accused Ashish Mishra is not a flight risk.”
Senior advocate Ranjit Kumar, appearing for Mishra, justified the Allahabad High Court order. Jethmalani submitted that all witnesses were under police protection and there was no possibility of witness tampering. He also apprised the court that the state has vehemently opposed the bail plea of Mishra in the Allahabad High Court. Eight people, including four farmers, had died in violence on October 3, 2021, in Lakhimpur Kheri.
