NEW DELHI – The Yogi Adityanath government in the northern Uttar Pradesh state Friday detained Indian National Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra when she was on her way to a village where 10 people were killed in a shootout this week over a land dispute.
The Congress general secretary had landed Friday morning at Varanasi, the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where she went to a hospital to see those wounded in the Sonbhadra massacre.
After meeting the victims, she was scheduled to go to Sonbhadra but Priyanka, 47, was stopped in Mirazapur, following which she staged sat on the road and protested until she was taken away in a government car to a guest house.
General Secretary UP East @priyankagandhi addresses party workers from Chunar Fort. #UPmeinJungleRaj pic.twitter.com/AHkmgUZGD4
— Congress (@INCIndia) July 19, 2019
“I want to peacefully meet the family members of the victims who had fallen to the bullets in the clash. I want to see the orders under which I have been stopped to meet them,” Priyanka Gandhi was quoted by India Today as saying.
Her brother and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said the arrest was an arbitrary use of power by the Yogi Adityanath government.
https://twitter.com/RahulGandhi/status/1152129564857909249
Terming the arrest illegal and disturbing, Rahul Gandhi tweeted, “The illegal arrest of Priyanka in Sonbhadra, UP, is disturbing. This arbitrary application of power, to prevent her from meeting families of the 10 Adivasi farmers brutally gunned down for refusing to vacate their own land, reveals the BJP Govt’s increasing insecurity in UP.”
Ten people were killed and 28 injured on Wednesday when they resisted an attempt by the village headman and his supporters to take possession of 90 bighas of disputed land in Sonbhadra district’s Ghorawal area.
