Mirzapur: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who was prevented by the Uttar Pradesh police from meeting the families of the Sonbhadra shootout victims on Friday, was allowed to meet them on Saturday morning when they arrived at the guest house in Mirzapur where the Congress leader has been detained for the last 24 hours.
Priyanka Gandhi had this morning tried to move out of the guest house, saying she would not leave without meeting the victims, but was not allowed by the police. However, when the family members of the shootout victims arrived, the police decided to let them enter the guest house.
“Two relatives of victims have come here to meet me, 15 others are not being allowed to meet me. Even I am not being allowed to meet them. God knows what their mindset is,” Priyanka Gandhi had said this morning.
In a series of late-night tweets, the 47-year-leader had said senior police and government officials had come to meet her around midnight, asking her to leave without meeting the families.
“I told them clearly that I did not come here to break any laws but came only to meet the affected families. I have told them I won’t go without meeting the affected families,” she had tweeted.
Visuals showed Gandhi sitting with party workers in the dark after a power outage at the Mirzapur guest house. The Congress party workers, who were with her, alleged that the district administration was doing this to force her to leave the place, news agency ANI reported.
Earlier this week, 10 people were killed and over 24 injured in a village in Sonbhadra when a village chief, Yagya Dutt, and his associates, fired on a group of tribal farmers over a land dispute.
On Friday, Priyanka Gandhi landed at Varanasi, the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where she went to a hospital to see those wounded in the Sonbhadra massacre. Later, she was stopped when she was on her way to a village in Sonbhadra, about 80 km away, after reports emerged that gatherings had been banned at the district.
