A young man whose family described him as a BJP worker was found with a bullet in his temple at a Union BJP minister’s house in an Uttar Pradesh village on Friday morning.

Kaushal Kishore, minister of state for housing and urban affairs, acknowledged that the pistol found at the site belonged to his second son Vikas.

He, however, said that none from his family was present in the house, in village Begariya in Lucknow district, when Vinay Srivastava, 28, was murdered.

“I received information after the incident took place around 4am and called the police. My son (Vikas, who lived in the house) had gone to New Delhi on Thursday to see his ailing mother. He will be back today,” Kishore told reporters.

While Begariya falls in Lucknow parliamentary seat, Kishore is MP from neighbouring Mohanlalganj (SC) constituency and lives there with his wife Jai Devi (party MLA from Malihabad) and youngest son Ayush.

Vinay’s brother said: “My brother and three or four other young men used to work for the BJP and often stayed with Vikas in his house. Some people invited my brother to the minister’s house for a booze party and killed him.”

He added: “Someone called me in the morning and claimed Vinay had committed suicide. When we went there, we saw him lying on the floor, shot through the temple.”

He asked: “If Vikas was not in the house, why was his pistol there, available to others?”

Deputy commissioner of police (west Lucknow) Rahul Raj said the murder was the result of a dispute that arose while a group of BJP workers were playing cards for money. He said Vinay had lost Rs 15,000 and was shot by the winner, who “pulled the pistol out from under the bed and fired”.

“We have registered a murder case and detained three people,” he said. “We have also recovered the pistol, which was issued in the name of Vikas Kishore. There are CCTV cameras in the house and we are trying to collect footage. A forensic team has visited the spot.”

Joint commissioner of police Akash Kulhari later said that Ankit Verma, Ajay Rawat and Shamim Ahmad had been arrested. Sources said all three were BJP workers.

Kishore’s eldest son Akash had died in October 2020, apparently of kidney disease.

On March 15, 2021, Ayush’s wife Ankita Singh had slashed her wrist after releasing a video threatening suicide and accusing her husband of abandoning her and her parents-in-law of refusing to accept her. She is now estranged from Ayush.

Ayush had accused Ankita’s brother Adarsh Singh of shooting him in the right arm. But police arrested Ayush and said he had confessed to shooting himself and framing Adarsh. Ayush is out on bail.