Lakhimpur Kheri violence case live updates: Union minister's son arrested after 12 hours of questioning

On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court had asked the UP government to file a report on the Lakhimpur Kheri violence by Friday. A single-member judicial inquiry panel of retired high court judge Pradeep Kumar Srivastava was announced on Thursday. It will submit a report in two months.

Earlier, IG (Lucknow) Laxmi Singh had said, “They revealed the names of three persons involved in the incident. We cannot arrest them because they are dead. We have gathered important leads from the two persons we are questioning.”

A bench of Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli asked the state government for a status report by Friday after UP additional advocate general Garima Prashad informed the court that the state had already appointed an SIT to conduct a probe as well as a judicial commission of inquiry headed by a retired Allahabad HC judge.

The SC on Thursday asked the UP government to furnish information on action taken by it in the aftermath of the incident and on how many people have been booked and arrested in the case.

Significantly, police also said empty cartridges had been found during a sweep at the site of the killings in Banbirpur. “On Wednesday, the site was examined by the forensic team. Two empty .315 cartridges were found. On Thursday, metal detectors were used at the spot again,” a police statement said.

“Among the unnamed accused in the (farmers’) FIR, six have been identified so far. Three of them had died on the spot. Two others — Lav Kush from Banbirpur and Ashish Pandey from Taranagar — were arrested on Thursday,” a police statement said.

Hours after a SIT was set up and a judicial inquiry panel appointed, the first arrests — two men, part of Union junior home minister Ajay Mishra Teni’s convoy that allegedly ran over and killed four farmers — were made in Sunday’s Lakhimpur Kheri killings case. The minister’s son, Ashish Mishra, has been summoned by the SIT.