The Supreme Court will on Tuesday hear a plea by a BJP leader seeking a CBI investigation into the violent incident in Mathura which resulted in the death of 29 people, including two police officers, and damage to public property.
The Supreme Court vacation bench, comprising Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Amitava Roy, agreed to hear the matter on Tuesday after counsel Kamini Jaiswal mentioned it and requested an urgent hearing.
The violence took place on Thursday in Mathura when the police tried to clear a massive encroachment at Jawahar Bagh public park by the members of Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah, on the direction of the Allahabad High Court. The violence claimed the lives of 29 people, including a Superintendent of Police and a Station House Officer (SHO), while another 23 police personnel were injured.
Petitioner Ashwini Upadhyay, who is a member of the Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said the CBI enquiry was necessary to find out the root cause of the Mathura incident and possible “nexus among the executive, legislatures and the extremist group”.
The central government was ready to hold a CBI inquiry into the incident but Uttar Pradesh government was not recommending the same, the petition contended. Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah was formed by a breakaway group of the followers of the religious leader Jai Gurudev, who had died in 2012, it said.
Appearing for Upadhyay, counsel Kamini Jaiswal told the court that there were media reports about destruction of evidence. She said that besides loss of human lives, 200 vehicles were burnt and a large number of gas cylinders had been destroyed in a fire that broke out during the violence.
The petition also alleged that Ram Vriksh Yadav, the leader of Swadhin Bharat Vidhik Satyagrah who used to be a follower of Jai Gurudev, was running a parallel government with the connivance of powerful people in the Uttar Pradesh government.
“It is believed by local residents that Yadav was very close to some of the ministers of the Uttar Pradesh government, which is why the local administration was unwilling to act against him,” the petition said.