Apparently under pressure from the attack mounted by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, the Mayawati government on Tuesday ordered a forensic inquiry of the ashes allegedly from human bodies burnt in Bhatta Parsaul village of Greater Noida.
A government spokesperson said samples of the ashes had been sent to the Forensic Science Lab in Agra.
The war between the Congress and Mayawati over land acquisition in western UP is set to escalate with the Congress likely to drum up the issue at its convention in Varanasi beginning on Wednesday. Both Rahul and Sonia Gandhi will attend the convention.
On Monday, Rahul had met the prime minister with a delegation of farmers from the village where four people were killed in firing between the police and agitating farmers on May 7. The Congress general secretary had alleged that local officials had got several bodies of farmers burnt to suppress the brutal killings. He told reporters that the ashes spread in a 70 feet area contained human remains, and that this was damning evidence exposing the Mayawati regime’s “brutalisation” of the farmers.
Rahul even gave out photographs of the area where the ashes are strewn. He had also alleged that the security personnel had raped women, beat up the men folk and ransacked several houses in the village.
These allegations find mention in the memorandum the farmers accompanying Rahul gave to the PM. “Our men folk have been shot and killed by the UP Police and PAC, and their bodies burnt. Many men folk have been missing since May 7, 2011,” the memorandum states.
The Mayawati government has, however, stoutly denied the allegations. Meerut division commissioner Bhuvanesh Kumar and inspector general (Meerut Zone) Rajnikant Mishra told reporters in Noida on Tuesday that only four people had died in the violence. They also said there was no report of any rape from the village.
Allegations about human remains, ashes of dead bodies and rapes in Bhatta Parsaul are completely “false and baseless”, they asserted. “The government has decided to send the ashes for forensic analysis to settle the matter,” the officials said. They denied the ashes had any human remains. “The photographs (given out by Rahul Gandhi and carried in the media) do not show anything clearly,” the officials said in a statement released to the media.
The officials said the local police had information that anti-social elements who had orchestrated the violence in the village had brought in supplies of explosive materials to engineer blasts.
“We are examining whether these ashes are from the explosive material gathered here. We will know the truth after the forensic tests,” the officials said.
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