Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government has directed a judicial probe into the violence in Mathura that left 29 people including two policemen dead and several others injured.
Imtiyaz Murtaza, retired judge of the Allahabad High Court, will conduct the inquiry, an official spokesperson said.
Facing flak over the incident, the Uttar Pradesh government yesterday ordered the transfer of the District Magistrate and the Senior Superintendent of Police of Mathura.
The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) workers took to the streets in protest and clashed with police in an attempt to gherao the Uttar Pradesh Assembly building to protest against the ironic Jawahar Bagh incident in Mathura.
Earlier in the day, the apex court had rejected a plea moved by the lawyer Ashwini Upadhyay, who is also a spokesperson for the BJP’s Delhi unit, seeking a CBI enquiry into the violence.
The bench said that petitioner Ashwini Upadhaya cannot approach the apex court through a PIL when a plea on similar issue is already pending before the Allahabad High Court.
"You approach the Allahabad High Court for the remedy," the bench said.
It further said it was not inclined to pass any order and courts cannot order a CBI probe as "a matter of routine as it is for the state government concerned to decide on the issue of handing over the probe to CBI".
29 people, including Mathura SP Mukul Dwivedi and SHO Santosh Kumar Yadav, were killed in the clash between the police and encroachers that broke out in the city on June 2 when police tried to evict illegal occupants, believed to be of Azad Bharat Vidhik Vaicharik Kranti Satyagrahi, from Jawahar Bagh on Allahabad High Court orders.
