Motorbike-borne assailants shot dead the head of a pro-Hindu outfit on a Lucknow street on Sunday morning, continuing a trend of Sangh parivar-linked activists and leaders being murdered in Uttar Pradesh under Yogi Adityanath’s rule.
Ranjeet Bachchan, 45, was president of the Vishwa Hindu Mahasabha, a little-known social organisation he had formed after quitting the All India Hindu Mahasabha in 2015 and which claimed to help the aged and deprived.
Bachchan was on his morning walk with his “second wife” and his cousin Aditya Kumar Srivastava around 6am, heading towards the Dayanidhan Park in the heart of the city, when a motorcycle stopped near them, Srivastava said.
He said the pillion rider shot Bachchan in the head. As Bachchan slumped to the ground, the shooter got off, walked towards him and fired two more bullets into his head. Srivastava said he had tried to grab the assassin, who shot him in the arm before the bike sped away.
Srivastava was treated in hospital before the police detained him for questioning. Officers said two others were being questioned but would not reveal their identity, nor say whom they suspected and what the motive might have been.
Although the murder site in Hazratganj is part of a high-security area that is home to the Assembly, chief minister’s office and ministers’ bungalows, none of the dozens of CCTV cameras monitored the exact spot. Officers said this suggested a thorough reconnaissance and planning. They suspect a 9mm pistol was used,
Lucknow police commissioner Sujit Pandey said six teams had been formed to catch the killers. He said four policemen, on patrol duty in a van parked near the crime spot, had been suspended for taking 30 minutes to turn up after Srivastava’s phone call.
Srivastava said Bachchan had celebrated his birthday at a temple on Saturday.
Bachchan had campaigned for Adityanath during his All India Hindu Mahasabha days but has apparently not been involved in Sangh parivar politics since the split, sources in his hometown Gorakhpur said. They added that he had, however, met Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav a few times in the past two years.
Bachchan’s estranged “first wife” lives in a house he owns in Gorakhpur while he lives in Lucknow with the “second wife” whom he “married” in 2015. The estranged wife has lodged a bigamy case saying Bachchan never divorced her. Her sister had registered a case of sexual assault against Bachchan in 2015.
State All India Hindu Mahasabha president Rajiv Kumar Ashish said: “Hindu leaders are unsafe in Uttar Pradesh. I too need government security.”
On October 18 last year, Kamlesh Tiwari, leader of the fringe political outfit Hindu Samaj Party, was shot and stabbed to death by two visitors at his home-cum-office in Lucknow. He too had quit the All India Hindu Mahasabha, in 2017.
Two Gujarat youths have been arrested but Kamlesh’s mother and wife have blamed a BJP rival.
At least nine other parivar activists and local leaders have been murdered since October 2018, with the crimes mostly unsolved or attributed to personal enmity.
Sandeep Nagar, member of the Hindu Yuva Vahini — a two-decade-old militia formed by Adityanath — was killed and hanged from a tree in Gautam Buddh Nagar on November 27 last year.
Among the others killed were BJP workers Chaudhary Yashpal Singh (Saharanpur) and Sidharth Rohatgi (Bareilly) on October 10 and Kapoor Singh and Bachcha Singh Gaur (Kanpur) on September 5; BJP general secretary Rakesh Sharma (Hapur) on September 9; RSS leader Sompal Saini (Muzaffarnagar) on August 29; BJP leader Surendra Singh (Amethi) on May 26; and Bajrang Dal activist Rahul Verma (Mahoba) on October 2, 2018.
