New Delhi: The personal loss suffered by Rajeev Gupta and Satnam Singh are separated by more than two decades but they share a common struggle for justice against one powerful man, Ajay Kumar Mishra ‘Teni’, the Union minister of state for home affairs.
While Gupta has accused Teni of murdering his brother Prabhat Gupta in 2000, Satnam is the father of Lovepreet Singh, one of the four protesting farmers who were mowed to death allegedly by Teni’s son Ashish Mishra ‘Monu’ and his friends on October 3, 2021. Both incidents happened in Tikonia area of Lakhimpur Kheri, a sugarcane-rich district of Uttar Pradesh bordering Nepal.
After the Allahabad high court in May acquitted Teni in the Prabhat Gupta murder case, his brother Rajeev, who has been fighting for justice since 2000, recently moved the Supreme Court where he filed a special leave petition. The Tikonia case of 2021, in which eight persons were killed in total – four farmers, one journalist, two BJP workers and their driver – drags on in a trial court in Lakhimpur Kheri. Monu, Teni’s son, is the main accused in the killing of the four farmers and the journalist. The aggrieved families as well as farmer groups constantly demanded, though without success, that Teni, who gave a provocative speech against the farmers in the days leading up to the October 3, 2021 incident, be booked for criminal conspiracy.
Two years later, Satnam Singh is yet to come to terms with his son’s brutal death. Three vehicles belonging to Teni’s convoy ran over protesting farmers, killing Lovepreet and three other farmers. He acknowledges that the legal battle is tough as they are faced against an influential opponent, currently enjoying one of the most powerful positions in the country. “There is no law for them. The law is only for chote log (small people). Even if they have 50 murders on their hands, nothing will happen to them,” says Satnam.
However, he is willing to run the distance, that our legal system often asks of victims, for justice. “Till we are alive, this struggle will go on.”
The Sikh community, to which Satnam belongs to, own and farm large tracts of land in Kheri and adjoining districts of Pilibhit, Bahraich and Bareilly. They were at the forefront of the farmer protests against the three farm bills introduced by the Narendra Modi government, in the Terai region of UP. Satnam, who lives in Palia area of Kheri, has two daughters. Lovepreet, his only son, aspired to go abroad to Australia, when the Tikonia tragedy cut short his dreams and life. He was barely 20. While Satnam and other aggrieved families received Rs 45 lakh ex-gratia compensation they were promised by the government, the promise of a government job is yet to be fulfilled.
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Like Monu, his father Teni has also been under the shadow of a murder allegation. In 2000, when he was a vice-president of the district cooperative bank and was yet to enter electoral politics, ‘Teni Maharaj’, as he is locally known as, was accused of murdering Prabhat Gupta, a youth leader of the Samajwadi Party in Tikonia. In 2004, a local sessions court acquitted Teni and three others in the murder case. Teni, the MP from Kheri, maintained that he is innocent and was framed due to political rivalry and enmity over panchayat elections.
Prabhat Gupta (with garland). Photo: Special Arrangement
It is alleged that on July 8, 2000 when Prabhat alias Raju was going to his shop from his house he was fired at on his temple and between his chest and abdomen. The Gupta family accused Teni and three accomplices of the murder. After Teni’s acquittal by a lower court, the case dragged on legally for more than two decades, full of adjournments and judicial delays. In May this year, the Allahabad HC finally pronounced its judgment. It upheld the trial court verdict and acquitted Teni for lack of evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt.
Rajeev Gupta was devastated by the decision. He says the HC overlooked evidence and witnesses that proved Teni’s guilt. However, he has not given up his resolve for justice. His SLP against the acquittal is expected to come up for hearing in the apex court on October 9. Gupta says he will not stop till he drags down Teni from his ministerial perch. “I will not stop fighting for justice. I was disappointed by the acquittal but haven’t given up. I will put myself on mortgage, seek donations but fight. My brother will not come back. But by getting justice I want to ignite hope for justice in others,” he says.
Over the last two days, Tikonia witnessed a flurry of activities from both sides. On October 2, Teni was the chief guest at a BJP karyakarta sammelan held in his ancestral village Banveerpur. Though his son Monu, who has been directed by the SC to not enter UP unless for his trial hearings, was not present at the event, his photo featured prominently on the banner put up for the meeting as well as on posters across the Nighasan area. Today, October 3, local farmers have organised a prayer meet and a Kabaddi competition in memory of the “shaheed” farmers and journalist who were killed.
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Exactly two years ago, an annual wrestling competition (dangal) was organised by Monu in the Mishra’s ancestral village Banveerpur in memory of Teni’s father. Teni along with UP deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya were the main guests at the event. A helipad was constructed on the playground of the Maharaja Agrasen Inter College in Tikonia for Maurya’s helicopter to land. However, protesting farmers gathered at the site in the morning and dug up the helipad. Maurya was forced to take the road and since protestors had blocked this particular route, the organisers of the event escorted him to the event from an alternate route.
The area had been simmering with tension ever since Teni on September 25, 2021, had provocatively warned the farmers agitating against the three farm laws, later repealed by Modi before elections in Punjab and UP, to “mend themselves” or else he would not take more than two minutes to mend them himself. Teni also reminded the farmers of his ‘past record’ before he was elected a public representative, which farmers interpreted as an open threat of violence, and said that he did “not run from any challenge.”
Scenes at the site of the incident in Tikonia, Lakhimpur Kheri on October 4, 2021 a day after the farmers were mowed down.
It was against these comments that farmers, many of them Sikh, had gathered in Tikonia that day when three vehicles, including a Thar in which Monu was allegedly sitting with his aides, belonging to Teni’s private convoy ran over them mercilessly and without provocation. Farmers Lovepreet Singh (19), Gurvinder Singh (18), Daljeet Singh (35) and Nachattar Singh (55) were killed. A local scribe who was covering the protest, Raman Kashyap (32), was also mowed down by the speeding SUVs. Several others were injured. The outraged farmers allegedly lynched to death two BJP workers, Shubham Mishra and Shyam Sunder, and a driver Hari Om Mishra, in retaliation after the vehicles came to a halt. The farmers alleged that Monu and some of his aides fled into the fields on foot to escape the enraged mob and even fired shots at them and in the air with weapons. Initially, farmers had even alleged that one of the four farmers killed Gurvinder Singh, had been shot dead by Monu as he tried to escape. However, two autopsy reports of Gurvinder did not show any bullet injuries.
Monu and his father Teni maintained that at the time of the violence in Tikonia, Monu was in Banveerpur village overseeing the wrestling competition. However, in a 5,000-page chargesheet filed in court, the Special Investigation Team probing the incident last year said that Monu was present at the site of the violence. The SIT described it as a “pre-planned conspiracy.”
Based on oral, documentary and scientific evidence, the SIT also said that after running over the farmers, the accused including Monu ran towards the sugarcane fields while firing from their weapons.
Last year, the state government counsel while appearing in the HC, informed the court that the forensic report of the weapons recovered from the accused men corroborated the prosecution version that indiscriminate firing was done from the weapons. While Monu fired from his revolver, his rifle was used by co-accused Nandan Singh Bisht, said the SIT chargesheet. Another accused Sumit Jaiswal, who was captured on video alighting from the Thar SUV after the vehicle lost control, allegedly fired from an illegal arm. The SIT also recovered one pistol from accused Ankit Das, the grandson of former UP chief minister Babu Banarasi Das; one pump action gun 12 bore from Kale and one revolver from Satyam Tripathi.
Nachattar Singh’s son Mandeep Singh, a paramilitary jawan serving on the borders, says even his family is yet to get the government job promised to them. He hoped his brother would get the job.
“We have not got the government job yet or understood its process,” he said.
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After joining work as an SSB jawan in early 2021, Mandeep did not get to see his father till he was forced to leave his post in Almora late on October 3, 2021 and reach Tikonia the following day to attend the funeral.
Mandeep, 27, is unhappy that Monu is out on bail, as he fears it could influence the trial.
There were two FIRs registered in the incident. One by the farmers against Monu and others. The second by Sumit Jaiswal, a BJP worker, also an accused in the first case, against unknown farmers. The SIT had arrested 13 accused persons in the FIR lodged over the killing of the farmers. The name of the 14th accused Virendra Shukla was added to the chargesheet under section 201 (causing disappearance of evidence). In May 2022, the HC said the SIT charge-sheet would reveal overwhelming evidence against the accused persons for the “commission of the offence, which has been termed cruel,diabolic, brutal, barbaric, depraved, gruesome and inhuman.” The court had also noted that had Teni not made provocative statements, the Tikonia incident might not have taken place.
In the second FIR regarding the murder of the BJP workers, charges have been framed against four farmers, Guruwinder Singh, Kamaljeet Singh, Gurupreet Singh and Vichitra Singh.
So far, only ten witnesses have appeared in the case against the farmers while in the FIR against Monu and others, only four witnesses have been examined, said lawyers associated with the trial. The fifth witness is likely to be examined in court on October 13.
The body of one of the farmers in Tikonia, Lakhimpur Kheri being taken away on October 4, 2021 a day after four farmers were mowed down. Photo: Omar Rashid.
Pawan Kashyap, 32, brother of scribe Raman Kashyap, says it may be difficult to get justice till Teni remains a minister. “He is a powerful man and is moneyed. Justice bows to power. Till he is a minister in the government, it will be difficult for us to get justice,” says he.
Pawan, who is also a paraikor in the case, alleged the hearings are held under a tense atmosphere where people from the rival side gather in court in large numbers. This intimidates the witnesses, he alleged. “When the witness sees 15-20 people in court, some with arms, even they get scared for their lives.”
Raman’s death has made life difficult for the Kashyap family. His father stopped working after he got a heart ailment in 2016. Raman’s youngest brother Rajat Kashyap was running a small shop in Nighasan till COVID-19 forced it to be shut down. Compounding the misery for the family, Rajat died in March this year after suffering from blood cancer. He left behind a young child. Raman himself left behind two young children, a son (5) and daughter (12).
Pawan is now the sole breadwinner in the family, putting him under tremendous pressure.
“Our existence has been jolted,” Pawan says, stressing that whenever he steps out of his house his family is worried about his safety. “’If something happens to me, what will happen to the three kids’, my family wonders,” he says.
Vinay Kumar Singh, a lawyer for the deceased farmers, says the trial is in evidence stage. Singh alleges that there was pressure being put on their witnesses. “There is an attempt to break our witnesses,” said Singh. For instance, he said that in a recent hearing, when he felt that his witness, whose identity he did not reveal, was under pressure, he got an adjournment saying that the witness’ mental condition was not right that day.
Shailendra Kumar Gaur, lawyer for accused Ankit Das, however, refuted the allegations that the accused side were pressuring the witnesses. “No, no, nothing like that. They (Ankit Das, Monu and others) appear in court only when there is a hearing. Otherwise, they stay out of the state,” he said.
The Supreme Court in January while granting interim bail to Monu had asked him to stay out of UP and the NCT. Recently, the court modified its order to allow him to stay in NCT to take care of an ill family member. The Lakhimpur Kheri trial judge earlier this year informed the SC that the trial against Monu and his co-accused would take a minimum of five years to be completed. The case against Monu would have 208 oral witnesses, 171 documentary evidence, 17 scientific evidence, 7 physical evidence and 24 forensic science laboratory reports, the prosecution proposed in the chargesheet.
The bereaved farmers are mentally-prepared for the long-haul. However, Satnam Singh regrets the fact that Teni is still a minister and was not charged as a co-accused. He says the bodies of the four farmers, which were kept on display at the site of the incident the day after, should not have been cremated until Teni faced action. It must be recalled that amid a tense atmosphere in Tikonia where farmers had gathered with the bodies to start a long-drawn protest, Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait had mediated between the government and the enraged farmers to diffuse the tension.
Had the bodies been kept at the site for just a day longer, the government would have been under pressure to act against Teni and force him to resign, says Satnam, stressing that the farmer unions did not consult them before taking the call.
The Wire dialled the phone numbers of district Magistrate Kheri Mahendra Bahadur Singh to ask him about the jobs promised to the kin of the farmers killed in Tikonia. But he could not be reached.
