Gorakhpur riots case: HC defers hearing till Monday

The Allahabad High Court today deferred till Monday the hearing on a petition seeking a CBI inquiry into the 2007 Gorakhpur riots in which Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had been named as one of the accused.
A division bench comprising Justices Krishan Murari and Akhilesh Chandra Sharma posted the matter for further hearing on July 31.
"Some preliminary objections were today raised before the court with regard to maintainability of the petition.
"We will reply to these when hearing resumes on Monday", counsel for the petitioners S F A Naqvi said.
The petition has been filed by Gorakhpur resident Parvez Parwaz, who had also filed an FIR in connection with the riots, and one of the witnesses in the case Asad Hayat.

"The state government submitted that our petition had become infructuous since we were asking for transferring the investigation to an independent agency at a time when the probe by the CB-CID was already complete," Naqvi said.
"The state government also raised some objections about the credentials of the petitioners, highlighting some criminal cases against Parwaz and different contact addresses given by Hayat on two different occasions", he said.
Yogi Adityanath, who heads the sprawling Gorakhnath temple besides having been a five-time BJP MP from Gorakhpur, has been named in the FIR alongside the then city Mayor Anju Chaudhary and local MLA Radha Mohan Das Agarwal.