By IANS
Lucknow : A student was killed as police fired at a mob in former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s village Wednesday on a day of violence, with Chief Minister Mayawati threatening the Samajwadi Party leader and his family with arrest.
The police opened gunfire in former chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav’s village Saifai after coming under attack from students angered over a ban on student union elections in degree colleges in the state.
Several people were also injured in clashes in parts of the state Wednesday following an alleged attack the day before on the Samajwadi Party leader’s son and brother, Akhilesh Yadav and Shivpal Yadav respectively.
Authorities admitted the death of the student but refused to take responsibility for the killing.
“We have to look at the picture in totality, so I am not in a position to tell you right away as to who was responsible,” Principal Home Secretary J.N. Chamber told IANS here.
Akhilesh Yadav is an MP and Shivpal Yadav was the most powerful minister in the previous Samajwadi Party regime.
It had started Tuesday afternoon when a crowd of the Samajwadi Chatra Dal, the student wing of the Samajwadi Party, tried to give a memorandum to two ministers of the Uttar Pradesh government.
When the police prevented the workers from giving the memorandum — asking for restoration of student elections — to the ministers, the mob reportedly turned unruly.
Several students were injured in similar crackdowns in Etawah, Mainpuri and also in Lucknow.
Later in the day, Mayawati issued a stern warning to Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Justifying the police action, she said: “Action has been taken against those indulging in violence and many of them were criminals and anti-social elements.
“Let me make it loud and clear that even Mulayam Singh Yadav or his brother would not be spared if they would support anti-social element indulging in such violence,” she told reporters.
“This is not Mulayam Singh Yadav regime under which ‘goondas’ had a field day and could even go to the extent of forcing a police officer to sit on the bonnet of their car and make him spin around the state capital. I mean business.”
She went on: “You remember, when my own party MP Rama Kant Yadav indulged in violence, I got him arrested from my own residence where he had come to see me; so there is no room for any pardon to mischief-mongers.”
She said a huge mob collected in Saifai and stoned the police. Soon the situation got out of hand and the police had to open fire, in which one student, Mukesh Kumar Yadav, died.
She accused the Samajwadi Party leadership of fuelling and precipitating the crisis.
“It all started when ruffians sent by the party tried to disrupt a function at a degree college Tuesday. As they took to violence, the police were constrained to move in.”