Ms Gandhi, who headed the three-member party team dispatched by BJP president Nitin Gadkari to investigate the communal outbreak there, was stopped at Badaun; while another MP, Yogi Adityanth, was asked to get to down from the Gorakhpur-Bareilly Express train at Barabanki at 3 am on Sunday, taken to a state guesthouse and not allowed to proceed further. The third team member, Rajendra Agarwal, MP from Meerut, was stopped in Rampur.
Ms Gandhi, who was travelling by road, had first been stopped by the police in Ghaziabad, and then allowed to proceed with a police escort to Badaun, 250 km from Bareilly.
A government helicopter kept an aerial vigil on the city, while a spokesman for the administration noted that there was no fresh violence on Sunday and claimed the situation was “completely under control”. He said: “No clash or violence has been reported from any part of the city since the morning.”
The curfew was kept in force as a preventive measure in five of six police station areas affected, including Prem Nagar, Subhash Nagar, Kotwali, Baradari and Qila, government sources pointed out. The local administration was supplying essential commodities, including vegetable and milk, to residents in curfew-bound areas.
Speaking to reporters, Ms Gandhi lashed out at the Mayawati government, holding the state government responsible for “engineering” riots and “taking one-sided action to appease one particular community”.
She said the state police was harassing her on the directions of the state government. “There was a written order for not allowing me to enter Bareilly... No reason was given. Only when I said I would raise the issue before the Lok Sabha Speaker, we were allowed to reach Badaun,” she said, adding: “There were 10 police jeeps to prevent me (from entering Bareilly).”
It was wrong to say that tension between two communities was the reason behind the latest outbreak in Bareilly, she said. “Poor law and order in UP is responsible for the communal riots.”
Referring to a Muslim cleric, she alleged that while the man responsible for inciting the clashes was released, the district magistrate and SSP, who were working honestly and diligently, were removed without delay.
It might be recalled that the communal clashes broke out in Bareilly during the Barawafat procession. The situation was further aggravated after the arrest of a local cleric, Maulana Tauquir Raza Khan. The maulana’s release on Thursday night led to a violent backlash by Hindu extremist groups.
Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, holding the UP government and police responsible for the riots, meanwhile, criticised the maulana’s arrest and jailing, calling it an “insult”.
Age Correspondent
with agency inputs