HC dismisses petition in 2007 Gorakhpur riot case

Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a plea seeking an independent probe into an FIR related to the 2007 Gorakhpur riot case in which the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and the then Gorakhpur MP, Yogi Adityanath, was one of the accused.

A bench of Justices Krishna Murari and Akhilesh Chandra Sharma dismissed the petition filed by Parvez Parwaz and Asad Hayat, saying 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 registered in connection with the riot case and Hayat a witness. During the pendency of the writ petition, prosecution sanction was denied by the principal secretary (home) on May 3, 2017, which too was challenged by the petitioners.

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

It was alleged in the FIR that Adityanath, the then mayor of the city, 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 the CB-CID, the petitioner expressed concern that the state police may not act impartially and requested that the investigation be transferred to an independent agency.