Cong defies ban, holds 'march' in UP

The administration on Sunday refused permission to the Congress to take out the march, citing imposition of Section 144 in the state capital. But the party had declared that it would go ahead with its “yatra.

State Congress president Reeta Bahuguna Joshi and other senior leaders, including party MPs and MLAs, were detained as they started their march from the party office to the assembly.

All the arrested leaders, including Joshi, were later on released.

Joshi decried that the Mayawati regime for refusing permission to take out the “march”  and said it amounted to gaging the opposition voice in the state.

She also demanded a CBI probe into the mysterious death of Deputy Chief Medical Officer Y S Sachan inside the Lucknow jail a few days back and the killing of a teen inside a police station in Lakhimpur-Kheri district.

Cops beat journo

Meanwhile, irked over the “negative coverage” in the wake of a series of rapes and murders in the state, two cops on Sunday night allegedly “manhandled” a senior TV journalist here and threatened to kill him if he did not “mend his ways”.

As the media personnel strongly protested and held a demonstration near Chief Minister Mayawati’s residence, officials announced registration of a case against the cops and said they have been suspended.

Shalabh Mani Tripathi, bureau chief of a Hindi TV channel, was allegedly roughed up by Additional Superintendent of Police B P Ashok and Circle Officer Anoop Kumar while Tripathy was leaving for home from his office on Sunday, according to sources here.

The two cops were, according to Tripathi, “upset” with him for “projecting a negative image of the cops” in its coverage of the Dy CMO Y S Sachan’s mysterious death inside jail and also the incidents of rape and murders in the state.

“The cops dragged me to their jeep and beat me after taking me to the Hazratganj police station. They also threatened to kill me if I continued to show them in bad light,”alleged Tripathi.