5 months ago
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A day after the security breach in Lok Sabha, police said it was looking for Lalit Jha, one of the six accused who is said to be absconding. Mr. Jha is said to be a common link between the group who belong to diverse educational, social and economic background from different parts of the country.
Grouse against rising unemployment, Prime Minister’s silence on issues such as the Manipur ethnic violence and admiration for Bhagat Singh appear to be among the several common interest of the suspects, their social media posts show.
While four of the five arrested persons were produced in the court on Thursday, a fifth accused, Vicky alias Vikash Sharma, will be presented in the court on Friday.
The sixth accused — Lalit Jha from Kolkata, describes himself as a “teacher” on Instagram profile. He uploaded two videos of the protest outside the Parliament on social media on Wednesday.
Mr. Jha is associated with a non government organisation (NGO), Samyabadi Subhas Sabha, in West Bengal. At 12.43 p.m. on Wednesday, he uploaded a 30-second video clip on Facebook of the two accused — Neelam Devi (42) from Jind, Haryana and Amol Shinde (25) from Latur, Maharashtra — who set off canisters emitting yellow and red colours and shouted slogans outside the Parliament.
The video was captioned “Protest against the dictatorship government outside the MP.”
At 1.04 p.m. the same day, he uploaded a longer version of the video on Instagram.
Around the same time, Mr. Jha sent the video to Nilakhya Aich, a student at Bidhhannagar Government College in West Bengal, who is the founder of the NGO named after Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
Two men, part of the same group, jumped into the Lok Sabha from the visitor’s gallery at 1.01 p.m. the same day with colour spraying canisters. They were identified as Lucknow resident Sagar Sharma, 28, and Mysuru resident D. Manoranjan, 33.
Mr. Jha is said to be absconding after the incident with the phones of the other four suspects.
Mr. Aich said that Mr. Jha asked him to save the video and watch the media coverage relating to it.
Mr. Aich said that he had Mr. Jha in Kolkata in April this year at a seminar. “I never thought that he would do anything so violent. He had never shared any motive for such protersts to me,” he said adding that he was approached by the Delhi Police and they asked him not to give interviews to the media.
Mr. Jha has Swami Vivekananda’s photograph as profile photo on Instagram and Facebook. He has shared several posts on Bhagat Singh, Subhash Chandra Bose, Rashbehari Bose, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Babu Jagjivan Ram, Rabindranath Tagore, Binoba Bhave, Fidel Castro and quoted poets and writers such as Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Avtar Singh Sandhu alias Pash and Harishankar Parsai.
Locals in Kolkata’s Burrabazar area where Mr. Jha stayed on rent for several years said used to teach students. He vacated the rented one-room apartment about one-and-a-half years ago.
The family hails from Bihar and father worked as a priest in certain neighborhoods of Kolkata.
A police source said Manoranjan D had conducted a recce of the Parliament during the budget session and noticed that visitors are not asked to remove their shoes. Like Wednesday, it was Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member of parliament Pratap Simha who had facilitated his entry in February though a visitor’s pass. The two suspects-Sagar Sharma and Manoranjan hid the canisters in the cavity of the customised shoes on Wednesday.
The group met in Gurugram on December 10. The source said the protest was planned a year ago.
While Sharma drives an e-rickshaw in Lucknow, Manoranjan used to help his father with farming.
Neelam, daughter of a halwai, holds an M.Phil degree and had cleared various competitive examinations. Amol Shinde had unsuccessfully appeared for several police recruitment examination.
Meanwhile the local Khap and farmer leaders and social activists held a panchayat in Haryana’s Narwana on Thursday seeking Neelam’s immediate release and demanded that terror charges be dropped.
