HC dismisses petition in Gorakhpur riot case of 2007

The Allahabad high court on Thursday dismissed a petition in the Gorakhpur riot case of 2007 in which the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and the then Member of Parliament from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath, was one of the accused.

The bench comprising justices Krishna Murari and Akhilesh Chandra Sharma delivered the judgement in the petition filed by Parvez Parwaz and Asad Hayat.

The court said it did not find any procedural irregularity in the order of refusal to grant sanction to prosecute the accused in the case.
Parwaz, was the complainant in the FIR while Hayat was a witness in the riot case.

During the pendency of the writ petition, prosecution sanction was refused by the principal secretary (home) on May 3, 2017, which too was challenged by the petitioners by making amendments in the petition.

In the writ petition, the petitioners had requested the court to direct investigation by an independent agency into an FIR registered in 2008 in Gorakhpur against the then MP Yogi Adityanath and three others in a case of alleged communal violence on January 27, 2007.

In the FIR lodged at Cantt police station of Gorakhpur, it was alleged that Adityanath, the then mayor of Gorakhpur, Anju Chaudhri, the then MLA Radha Mohan Agarwal and another person had incited communal violence and riot in Gorakhpur in 2007.

Stating that the matter was being investigated by CB-CID, the petitioner expressed the apprehension in the petition that the state police may not be impartial in the matter and requested that the investigation be transferred to an independent agency.