Allahabad HC quashes plea to prosecute UP CM in rioting case
LUCKNOW : In a big relief to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the Allahabad High Court on Thursday dismissed a petition seeking permission to prosecute him in a 2007 rioting case.
The plea was filed by Rashid Khan who alleged that Adityanath, then the Lok Sabha Member from Gorakhpur, incited a mob into vandalising a ‘mazaar’ belonging to Muslims.
Advocate General Raghvendra Singh challenged the maintainability of the plea, saying as the police has filed a chargesheet, the petitioner has no right to file a case. Earlier, the additional chief judicial magistrate court had taken cognizance of the chargesheet and dismissed the case. 
Following this, the petitioner approached the High Court. K. Narayan heard the petition and reserved the order which was finally pronounced on Thursday.
The high court said it did not find any procedural irregularity in the order of refusal to grant sanction to prosecute the Yogi Adityanath who was one of the accused in the Gorakhpur riots case. Adityanath, who was the parliamentarian for Gorakhpur then, was one of the accused in the case.The court said it did not find any procedural irregularity in the order of refusal to grant sanction to prosecute the accused.
The bench of justices Krishna Murari and Akhilesh Chandra Sharma delivered the judgment on a petition filed by Parvez Parwaz and Asad Hayat. While Parwaz is a complainant in the FIR registered in 2008, Hayat is a witness in the case.
The petitioners had been seeking an investigation by an independent agency amid fears that the CB-CID, a state government agency probing the case, may not be impartial. However, even when the petition for an independent inquiry was pending, the state’s principal secretary for the home department refused on May 3 last year prosecution sanction to the investigating agency. In the FIR lodged at Cantonment police station of Gorakhpur, it was alleged that Yogi, then mayor of Gorakhpur Anju Chaudhri, legislator Radha Mohan Agarwal and another person had incited communal violence and riots in Gorakhpur in January 2007.
