By Faisal Fareed, TwoCircles.net,
Lucknow: In an incident which is feared to snowball into major law and order issue in the state, two advocates died of gunshots while several others were injured following indiscriminate firing by Lekhpal(revenue department employee) from a rifle in Mohammadi tehseel of Lakhimpur Kheri on Saturday.
The situation now at Lakhimpur Kheri is very tense with three additional companies of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) being sent from Lucknow as enforcement. Commissioner Lucknow Prashant Trivedi and ADG Subesh Kumar Singh too were flown in by state helicopter to control the things.
Senior police officers which included SP Lakhimpur Kheri, Amit Chandra and SP city, Rajeev Malhotra were the first to reach the spot and shifted the injured to District Hospital. Police has detained two dozen lekhpals including Ajayendra Awasthi and the rifle has been confiscated. The situation is stated to be tense but under control.
Meanwhile several bar associations of the state and opposition parties have condemned the incident terming it as a failure of state government.
The incident was fall-out between Lekhpal) and lawyers in the Mohammadi Tehseel. For past one week they were at logger heads and cross cases had been lodged by both the parties. The lawyers were demanding transfer of one leader of Lekhpals, Ajayendra Awasthi from Tehseel. On Saturday, the lawyers had a tussle with Lekhpals. The issue snowballed into stone pelting and soon Ajayendra allegedly opened fire from his rifle killing two advocates Pradeep Dixit and Mukul Tewari while half a dozen other lawyers along with Anand Shukla, who is owner of Mohamedi petrol pump and one Raees, all were critically injured.
Reports claimed that Raees also had died but it could not be confirmed. In retaliation lawyers torched more than 50 vehicles and damaged government offices. They were demanding that SDM and Tehsildar should also be booked for murder.