Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra ended her more than 24-hour-long dharna at Chunar Fort on Saturday after the Mirzapur administration allowed the families of the Gond tribals killed in Ghorawal area of Sonbhadra on Wednesday meet her.
With this, the more than 24-hour-long standoff between the Congress leader and Uttar Pradesh government also ended, a day after she was detained when she insisted on going to Sonbhadra where 10 people were gunned down on Wednesday.
After meeting the bereaved families of the victims at guest house in Mirzapur where she had stayed overnight, refusing an offer from local administration to furnish a personal bond and leave, Priyanka headed back to Delhi with promise to return.
She said those who had “arrested” her and brought her to the Chunar guest house were now saying she was free to leave.
“I want to tell them that I have fulfilled my objective. I met the family members. I am leaving today, but I shall return,” she told party workers who thronged the guesthouse.
UP Congress leader Ajay Rai said, “The standoff between Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi and the Mirzapur district administration is over as she has met members of the aggrieved families from Sonbhadra.”
Rai said Priyanka met 15 people from the victims’ families, including seven women.
The ten Gond tribals were shot dead when gram pradhan Yagya Dutt and his supporters allegedly opened fire in an attempt to take possession of a piece of land in Ubbha village in Sonbhadra’s Ghorawal area.
Twenty-eight others were injured.
After the meeting with the villagers, Priyanka left for Varanasi, where she visited the Kashi Vishwanath and Kaal Bhairav temples.
The deadlock ended amid a show of solidarity in the Congress for Priyanks Gandhi Vadra, who is in-charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, with party leaders calling her detention “illegal arrest” and organising protests at several places.
Congress leaders Rajeev Shukla, RPN Singh and Jitin Prasada landed at the Varanasi airport, but were stopped from moving ahead to Sonbhadra or Chunar, where Priyanka was then detained.
Earlier in Lucknow, a Congress delegation submitted a memorandum to UP Governor Ram Naik, urging him to direct the state government to allow Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to meet the Sonbhadra victims’ families.
A three-member Trinamool Congress delegation from Delhi was also detained at Varanasi airport.
Twenty-nine people have been arrested after the Sonbhadra clash, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had said on Wednesday, while blaming the previous Congress governments for the land dispute which has been festering for decades.
On Wednesday, Priyanka had met some of the injured victims at the BHU Trauma Centre in Varanasi. But she was stopped by police at Narainpur in Mirzapur district, while she was travelling to Sonbhadra by road.
When Priyanka insisted on going to Ubbha village, she and her supporters were brought to the guest house. The administration said she had been taken into “preventive detention’ as prohibitory orders were in force in Sonbhadra.
After the guest house meeting with the villagers, Gandhi accused the Sonbhadra administration of not acting in time to prevent the violence.
“There are children who have lost both parents. There are some families in which the children and their parents are in the hospital,” she told reporters.
She said the Congress would stand with the victims’ families and demanded that the state government should give a compensation of Rs 25 lakh each to the families of those killed or injured.
“The ownership of the land that they are cultivating for generations should be given to them,” she said.
“Cases registered against innocent villagers must be withdrawn and the people leading this fight for their rights must be given security. There is no need to entangle these people in politics,” she said.
On Twitter, she said, “Finally met the families of the Ubbha massacre. What they have been through is unimaginably brutal and unjust. Every single Indian should stand with them in the name of humanity.”
