Samajwadi Party (SP) president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections with the PDA equation of backward, Dalit and minority, has now heated up the atmosphere by counting PDA among the people killed in encounters by UP Police and STF. Akhilesh Yadav has called a press conference on Thursday in which he can further sharpen his questions on police encounters. On Tuesday, he shared a graph of 207 people killed in encounters and claimed that 125 of them were PDA people. However, Akhilesh did not clarify in the graph how old this data is.
After finding the angle of PDA in the encounter of UP police, Akhilesh is taking a very aggressive stance. The assembly elections in UP are at least two and a half years away but Akhilesh, excited by the victory over BJP in UP in the Lok Sabha elections, seems to be moving forward on the strategy of hunting BJP with the weapon of PDA by counting the caste of those killed in the encounter. The PC called yesterday is a step in the same direction. Since the encounter of Mangesh on September 5, Akhilesh Yadav has tweeted eight times in seven days on the police encounter. SP is seeing the political possibility of turning the backward classes from BJP to itself by counting the PDA in the encounter.
Akhilesh had tweeted on the very first day alleging that murders were taken on the basis of caste and said that the main accused was allowed to surrender on the basis of caste and the rest were shot in their legs. In another tweet on the same day, Akhilesh claimed that Mangesh Yadav was picked up from his home by the police two days back and claimed to have been killed in a fake encounter. He had urged the Supreme Court to take cognizance of the matter. Then Akhilesh tweeted on September 7 and asked that when all the accused have been arrested, then why has the looted goods not been recovered. Let us tell you that the goldsmith whose shop was looted has claimed that most of the looted gold has not been found.
On the same day, Akhilesh shared a video of Mangesh’s sister crying and appealed to the court and the Human Rights Commission to take cognizance. In this video, Mangesh Yadav’s sister is saying that Mangesh had gone to her school to deposit the fees on 28 August. On the night of 1 August, the police came at 2 am and took her brother away. They said they would release him after questioning. Then they did not release him and took him away and killed him.
Akhilesh made the fifth tweet on September 10 and said that people are saying to go to court but can anyone’s life be brought back from the court. On this day, Akhilesh made a total of three tweets on this issue. In the sixth tweet, Akhilesh Yadav brought the PDA angle in the encounter and wrote – “The encounter figures in the BJP rule are also the figures of the injustice of illegal killings and also the injustice done against the PDA.” Then Yadav shared the graph of 207 deaths in the encounter and said that 145 of them were from the PDA group. This was the seventh tweet on the encounter.
Akhilesh has tweeted his eighth tweet on fake encounter today (Wednesday, September 11) and said that the BJP government has encountered the truth itself. He has alleged that a pattern of encounter has been set in the BJP rule that first pick up someone, then make a story of a fake encounter, then show false pictures to the world, then after the murder, suppress the family by various kinds of pressure and temptations when they tell the truth.
Questions are being raised on the STF team involved in the Mangesh Yadav encounter
Yogi Adityanath government has ordered a magisterial inquiry after questions were raised on the Mangesh Yadav encounter. People are also raising questions on STF DSP DK Shahi, who was leading the encounter team, and some other policemen being seen wearing slippers. Mangesh’s family is saying that he had gone to deposit his sister’s school fees from 10 am to 2 pm on 28 August. Police is saying that he was involved in the jeweler’s robbery at 12.15 pm that afternoon. The Chief Minister is responding to Akhilesh’s attacks by saying that when a dacoit is killed, it feels like someone has touched his sore spot. Yogi is also saying that in the SP government, the bigger the goon, the bigger the post he got.