UP Police has not included the name of Surajpal alias Bhole Baba, popularly known as Narayan Hari Sakar, in the charge sheet of the famous Hathras stampede case of Uttar Pradesh. On July 2, 121 people were killed in the accident that took place after Surajpal’s satsang, mostly women and children. The police have named 11 people including two women servicemen as accused in the charge sheet. Police submitted 3200 page charge sheet in Hathras court on Tuesday. Its copy will be given to the accused during the next hearing on October 4. Surajpal was not made an accused in the FIR registered after the incident. The state government had constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and a judicial commission to investigate the accident and identify the culprits responsible for the negligence.
Hathras Police has rejected the allegation of being soft on Surajpal alias Bhole Baba and said that the investigation is still going on. Hathras ASP Ashok Kumar Singh said that investigation in one case is a continuous process and investigation is going on in this case also. On the question of clean chit to Bhole Baba, he said that it would be premature to reach any conclusion on the basis of the charge sheet.
The accused’s lawyer AP Singh has said that his client has not yet received the copy of the charge sheet. He will get a copy of the charge sheet in the next hearing on October 4. AP Singh said that among the 11 people who have been made accused in the charge sheet, two women servicemen have been granted bail from the High Court. One servant has already left while the bail bond of the other is yet to be filled.
A case was registered against the main organizer of the satsang, Dev Prakash Madhukar and others in the stampede case. The allegation was that these people gathered a crowd of more than 2 lakh in the name of giving permission to the administration for a gathering of 80 thousand people. Surajpal alias Bhole Baba, resident of Bahadurnagar village of Kasganj district, had said a few days after the accident that who can postpone the incident, whoever has come will go one day. Baba had alleged a conspiracy to create stampede in the satsang and said that people had informed him about the use of poisonous spray.
The SIT submitted the investigation report after a week, after which the Yogi Adityanath government suspended six officers including the SDM, Tehsildar, CO and SHO. The SIT did not deny a major conspiracy in the report submitted to the government. A judicial commission constituted under the chairmanship of retired Allahabad High Court judge Justice Brijesh Kumar Srivastava is also investigating the accident.