Bhojpuri folk singer Neha Singh Rathore, whose song UP Mein Ka Ba had targeted the Yogi Adityanath government, has been served a notice by Uttar Pradesh police over a reprised version on the death of a mother and her daughter during a bulldozer drive.
“The UP police came to my house at Indrapuri Colony, Akbarpur, Kanpur Rural at 8pm on Tuesday and handed a notice to my family members asking me to explain my conduct within three days. The notice asks whether I posted the song on social media and says it has created hatred in society,” Rathore told reporters on Wednesday.
“What they fail to understand is that I am a folk singer and cannot be tamed at any cost. I wrote and sang the song about the mother and her daughter in Kanpur Rural who died of burn injuries during bulldozer action,” she added.
“There is a BJP government in UP, so I asked them to explain the action. I would have asked the same to the Samajwadi Party if it were in power,” Rathore said.
The notice — signed by Pramod Kumar Shukla, in charge of Akbarpur Kotwali police station — accuses Rathore of creating “disharmony and tension”. “You are asked to explain within three days about the video. If your reply is found unsatisfactory, action can be taken against you under the relevant sections of IPC/ CrPC,” the notice says.
Rathore has been asked to explain whether she featured in the video, whether she herself posted it on Twitter and whether she manages the YouTube and Twitter accounts in her name on her own. She has been asked whether the lyrics had been written by her, if she had verified the allegations made and whether she was aware of the effects of the words used in the song on society.
Rathore has uploaded a video on Twitter that purports to show cops serving the notice on her. She is heard asking the personnel in the video who is “troubling them” and adding that it is not her.
The video shows Rathore signing the notice served on her as some cops capture the act on their cellphones.
In the 1.10-minute video of the song, titled UP Mein Ka Ba — Season 2 (What is there in UP), Rathore’s lyrics take on the Adityanath government for the deaths of Pramila Dixit, 54, and her daughter Shiva, 22, of burn injuries when a bulldozer was being used to demolish their allegedly illegal house at Chahla-Majhauli village in Kanpur Rural on February 13.
Krishna Gopal Dixit, the husband and father of the victims, has alleged that one of the officials in the demolition team set the house on fire when the mother and daughter had locked themselves in to stop it from being razed.
The district administration has claimed they died by suicide. A revenue officer and the bulldozer driver have been arrested. Before last year’s Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Rathore had released a song asking uncomfortable questions of the Adityanath government related to unemployment, the Hathras atrocity on a teen, Covid deaths, the Lakhimpur Kheri killings of farmers and the “Mandir-Masjid” politics.
Brajesh Pathak, the deputy chief minister, said: “We cannot allow anybody to create hatred and take the law and order for granted.”
Additional reporting by PTI
