New Delhi: The Supreme Court has granted interim bail to Ashish Mishra, the son of a Union minister and Bharatiya Janata Party heavyweight Ajay Mishra, in the Lakhimpur Kheri case.
Four farmers were killed on October 3, 2021, after a vehicle connected with Ashish ran them over. In the violence that ensued, four more people, including a journalist, died.
The Supreme Court directed Mishra to leave Uttar Pradesh within a week, LiveLaw has reported. He can stay neither in the Delhi National Capital Territory nor in UP for the eight weeks during which his interim bail will last. He can enter Uttar Pradesh only to attend trial court proceedings.
The bench ordered that attempts by him or his family to suppress or coerce witnesses will lead to bail cancellation.
Although the apex court was hearing only Mishra’s bail application, it decided to invoke its suo motu powers to grant interim bail to the four accused in the related case pertaining to the lynching of two BJP workers and the driver of a car as well, LiveLaw has separately reported.
The four accused are Gurwinder Singh, Kawaljeet Singh, Gurpreet Singh and Vichitra Singh. Their bail applications are pending at the Allahabad high court.
A bench of Justices Surya Kant and J.K. Maheshwari said while these were two separate FIRs with different narratives, the place of occurrence and substratum of the incident are the same.
“As a necessary corollary, we, in exercise of suo motu constitutional powers, extend the benefit of interim bail to the undertrial accused involved in the other version also…,” the bench said.
