Sonbhadra killings: Akhilesh slams CM, says ‘don’t blame Oppn for your failures’

Rejecting the CM’s charge, SP spokesperson Rajendra Chaudhary said that the pradhan of Umbha village, Yagya Dutta, who has been accused of leading the shooting that killed 10 villagers and left 23 others injured, had no connection with his party.

“The allegations levelled by Chief Minister Adityanath are baseless and the accused pradhan has nothing to do with the Samajwadi Party, and he is nowhere connected to the party. Akhilesh-ji himself has demanded that there should be strict action against the culprits of the incident. It is the responsibility of the government to punish them. Instead of making false allegations, they should focus on that. There is no truth in the allegation made by the CM,” said Chaudhary.

Claiming that the ruling BJP did not want the world to know about the anarchy prevailing in the state, Chaudhary said, “It (BJP) is unable to run the government in the state. The piece of land over which the clash took place was in dispute for years. The affected people had approached the officials during the tehsil diwas and thana diwas, but their grievances went unheard.”

Amid this, the BJP government said that Dutta he was a close aide of former SP MLA Ramesh Chandra Dubey. “The main accused in the Sonbhadra clash, village pradhan Yagyadutt was a close aide of former SP MLA Ramesh Chandra Dubey,” said media advisor Mrityunjay Kumar to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

Dubey was an SP MLA from Ghorawal Assembly segment.

“A person wielding clout, Yagyadutt campaigned for the SP in the past election. The brother of village pradhan used to get contracts for construction of roads before 2017,” said Kumar in a statement here.

(With PTI Inputs)