Gomti Nagar case accused meets Akhilesh Yadav, claims being framed because of his caste

Lucknow, Aug 15 (PTI) An accused in a recent molestation case, in which a woman was allegedly groped by a mob while traversing a waterlogged street in the Gomti Nagar area here, met Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday and claimed that he is being framed in the matter because of his caste.

After the meeting with the opposition leader, accused Pawan Yadav claimed that he was not present at the scene of the incident and was drinking tea when police apprehended him.

He claimed that he was nowhere to be seen in the footage of the incident and suggested that he might have been implicated in the case due to his caste — Yadav.

“One inevitably gets caught in the grindstone and perhaps me being a Yadav led to this,” Pawan Yadav told PTI.

Meanwhile, talking to reporters during a party meeting held on Independence Day, Akhilesh Yadav addressed the issue, without naming the accused.

“He had come here. He had gone to have tea and police picked him up,” the SP chief said and wondered why, during an Assembly session, only two names were mentioned by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath when many others could have been included.

Speaking in the Assembly on August 1, Adityanath citied an incident from July 31 in which miscreants allegedly splashed water on a motorcycle rider and his wife during heavy rains in Lucknow.

The chief minister had named Pawan Yadav and Mohammad Arbaaz among the 16 accused and declared that they would face a “bullet train” rather than a “goodwill train”.

Four police personnel were suspended in connection with the incident and three senior police officials — Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Prabal Pratap Singh and assistant commissioners of police Amit Kumawat and Anshu Jain — were removed from their positions.

Besides, the entire police staff at the Gomti Nagar police station, including Station House Officer (SHO) Deepak Kumar Pandey, Chowki in-charge Rishi Vivek, Sub-Inspector Kapil Kumar and constables Dharmveer and Virendra Kumar, were suspended.