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Updated: Jun 30, 2019 14:42 IST

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Sunday hit back at Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra over her tweet on increasing crime rate in the state.

On Saturday, Priyanka had claimed that incidents of crime are on the rise in Uttar Pradesh, and criminals were “roaming freely” in the state.

“In Uttar Pradesh criminals are roaming freely and doing whatever they want. Criminal incidents are taking place one after the other. However, its BJP government has turned deaf. Has the Uttar Pradesh government surrendered before criminals?” she had tweeted in Hindi along with a collage of news reports indicating various incidents of crime.

In response to the claim, Adityanath, while addressing media here, said, “It is a case of sour grapes (angoor khatte hai). Her party president (Rahul Gandhi) lost from Uttar Pradesh. So while sitting anywhere - Delhi, Italy or England - they have to comment in order to remain in the news.”

Minutes after Priyanka’s tweet, Uttar Pradesh police responded by explaining how effective the police has been in combating crime, citing statistics.

“UP Police has taken strict action against serious offenders. In two years, 9,225 criminals have been arrested and 81 have been killed. Illegal assets of more than 200 crore people have been seized under the National Security Act and there has been an unprecedented decline in dacoity, murder, loot and kidnappings,” read a tweet on the official page.

“Because of UP Police’s effective working, there has been a 20-35 per cent decline in crimes. All sensational crimes have been solved in 48 hours,” the police said in another tweet.

While addressing the press conference, Adityanath also rubbished reports of several Hindus being forced to leave Meerut and said, “Nobody is migrating, who will migrate now that we have come to power? There might be some cases of personal disputes but there is no migration.”

A complaint was lodged on the NaMo app by a social worker claiming that 125 Hindu families had migrated from Prahlad Nagar in Meerut.

The complainant claimed that Hindu families are selling their homes and migrating out of fear.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)