Putting an end to the standoff between Priyanka Gandhi and the Uttar Pradesh government, she decided to return home to Delhi after meeting families of the Sonbhadra shootout victims. "I'll be back," Priyanka said outside the Chunar guest house in Mirzapur district where she was detained by police on Friday.
Though she tried to leave the guest house on Saturday morning to go meet the families, she was blocked by the police. Families of the shootout victims, however, later came to the guest house to meet her.
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Ten people from the Gond tribe were gunned down in Sonbhadra on Wednesday after they resisted an attempt by a village head and his supporters to take possession of 90 bighas of disputed land in the district's Ghorawal area.
In a series of tweets in Hindi, Priyanka who was detained in Mirzapur on her way to Sonbhadra on Friday morning, said, "If the government wants to put me in jail for the crime of meeting the victims, I am fully prepared for it. I have come here to meet the poor Adivasis who had faced the massacre and know about their problems. This is my dharma as the sevak of the people and also my moral right. My decision to meet them is firm," Gandhi said.
The Congress had issued a statement in which it demanded that Priyanka should be released immediately and that permission should be given to her to visit the families of the victims in Sonbhadra. The party has also decided that dharnas and demonstrations will be held throughout the country to protest against Priyanka's arrest and the “atrocities done over common man by the BJP government”.
-with inputs from PTI
