Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has targeted the Yogi Adityanath government for poor law and order and said that although leaders “may lie” on this issue, the fact remains that criminal activities in Uttar Pradesh were on the rise.

The Congress general secretary posted on Twitter a clipping from a Hindi newspaper that criminals in Muzaffarnagar shot at Vijay Singh, a sub-inspector, to help Rohit Singh alias Sandu, a hardcore criminal, escape when the police were taking him back from court to jail on Tuesday.

The criminals first threw chilli powder on the policemen before opening fire.

“The leaders in the Uttar Pradesh government may lie while reacting to my tweet,” Priyanka said in a tweet in Hindi on Tuesday night. “But there is an old saying, ‘Haath kangan ko arsi kya, padhe likhon ko Farsi kya (There is no need to prove something to educated people when there is already evidence before them)’.”

Priyanka has in the past two weeks posted several tweets on rising crime in Uttar Pradesh under the Adityanath government. In a tweet on June 28, she had said the state government had surrendered before criminals.

Reacting to one of her tweets, Adityanath had claimed during a news conference on June 30 that the crime rate in the state had come down by 20 to 35 per cent.

“In two years, 9,225 criminals have been arrested and 81 have been killed in police encounters. All sensational crimes have been solved within 48 hours and the overall crime rate has reduced by 20 to 35 per cent,” the chief minister had said while taking a jibe at Priyanka and suggesting that she focus on rebuilding the Congress.

Adityanath said Priyanka’s remark was “a case of sour grapes” because the BJP had defeated the Congress at the Centre and in the state.

“The Congress leader is speaking all these things to remain in the news,” Adityanath had said.