Lucknow: Samajwadi Party National President and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday said that the UP government wanted to shirk its responsibility for the deaths in the Hathras stampede incident by making minor and unrelated arrests. He alleged that these arrests were part of a "conspiracy" and demanded a judicial inquiry into these arrests.
The former Chief Minister asserted that the government is needlessly arresting people who were away from the original venue with some specific intention and is preparing to hold them guilty after the arrest.
He further alleged that the incident was a result of administrative failure.
Taking it to a social media post on X, Akhilesh Yadav wrote in Hindi, "To hide its failure in the 'Hathras incident', the UP government wants to shirk responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of people by making minor arrests. If this happens, it will mean that no one has learnt any lesson from the administrative failure in such events and such accidents will keep repeating in the future."
"The government and administration are needlessly arresting people who were away from the original venue with a specific motive and is preparing to hold them guilty after the arrest. These arrests are a conspiracy in themselves. There should be an immediate judicial inquiry into these arrests so that the game of the BJP government of UP can be exposed before the public."
"If the BJP government says that it had nothing to do with such an event, then the BJP government has no right to stay in power. Most of the poor people who attended this program were unhappy, exploited, oppressed, deprived, suppressed, on this basis it also means that the BJP government has no concern with such people. Whereas the government's attention should first be directed towards such people. Condemnable!"
Read: https://twitter.com/yadavakhilesh/status/1809462402355978499?
Earlier in the day, Devprakash Madhukar, the main accused in the Hathras stampede incident that claimed 121 lives, was produced before the Chief Judicial Magistrate Court.
Subsequently, he was sent to 14 days of judicial custody.
The court asked the accused whether he had written permission of the event and from whom did he got it. He replied that he got the permission from SDM for a gathering of 80,000 people.
The court asked had they done publicity of the event, to which Madhukar said he didn't.
Notably, Devprakash Madhukar, was absconding, and a reward of Rs 1 lakh was announced for providing information leading about him.
Madhukar was finally arrested on July 5 in the national capital. Two other accused, Ramprakash Shakya and Sanju Yadav, were also arrested today, the police said.
The stampede happened during the 'Satsang' of self-styled godman Suraj Pal Singh, or 'Bhole Baba' in Fulari village in Hathras on July 2.
—ANI