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A Muslim man was gunned down in broad daylight in Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s hometown Etawah on Sunday.
Adnan, 22, was allegedly killed for daring to marry a Hindu girl.
Kirti, 21, who had married Adnan after years of courtship, squarely blamed the registrar of marriages -- the local city magistrate Surendra Kumar Sharma -- for the incident.
“Six months ago, we had applied for a court marriage under the Special Marriages Act, but the city magistrate not only chose to sit over our application but even warned me several times not to go for an inter-religious marriage,” Kirti told media personnel outside the Etawah district magistrate’s office.
She added, "The city magistrate rejected our first application on flimsy grounds. He told me to forget about the marriage and to go back to my parents, who live in Lucknow. When both Adnan and I insisted that we wanted only a legal cover for the marriage as we had already been living together, he told us to file a fresh application."
“Even today, when we came with a fresh application, the city magistrate’s staff told me that I had taken a wrong decision in marrying a Muslim. Minutes after that, Adnan was shot at point blank range in the office compound,” she said.
It was only after some locals gathered and blocked the roads in Etawah on Sunday that the police registered a case against the culprits, who are still at large. The angry mob even blocked trains and pelted stones at buses.
Incidentally, the city magistrate is known for his proximity to Mulayam’s younger brother and state Public Works Department Minister Shivpal Yadav.
Taking serious note of the incident, party spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said, “We will ensure that the guilty officials are taken to task. We will not allow this injustice.”
Bahujan Samaj Party spokesman Swami Prasad Maurya warned, “We will raise the issue in the state assembly. If such wild killings can take place in the Samajwadi Party’s home turf Etawah, how can people remain safe in the rest of the state?”