LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party ( SP ) MLAs and leaders have once again left the party red-faced. Two days before an SP legislator was arrested from an illegal dance bar in Goa, three sons of SP MLA from Bachchrawan in Rae Bareli and over 24 of their rifle-wielding associates bulldozed an under-construction double-storied house of a doctor on Saturday. The action came after the doctor, who is also an additional chief medical officer ( ACMO ) of the district, refused to pay them Rs 20 lakh as protection money. One of the MLA's son is the district president of the SP's youth wing, Lohia Vahini .

The SP government is already under pressure from the opposition parties for the constantly deteriorating law and order situation in the state. Though chief minister Akhilesh Yadav has repeatedly maintained he was determined to check the menace, the fact that his own MLAs are making mockery of his efforts apparently explains why crime situation in UP is getting out of control.The Rae Bareli incident is all set to snowball into a major controversy as members of the medical fraternity were planning to take up the issue with Congress president Sonia Gandhi , who is the local MP.

The incident took place on Saturday when Vikrant, Ranjit and Sonu Akela, sons of the sitting ruling party MLA Ram Lal Akela , reached the site of the under-construction house of Dr Naseer in Krantipuri locality of Gandhi Nagar area along the Lucknow-Allahabad highway. The accused, accompanied by rifle toting musclemen with a bulldozer and an excavator (JCB) machine in tow, got the under-construction house razed to ground. As a swelling crowd of local residents watched, none dared intervene as the demolition continued for more than two hours.

When the contractor at the site tried to contact the police, a police sub inspector (SI) in uniform who later identified himself as sub inspector Arif Khan and claimed he was posted at Sultanpur, told him to stay out of the issue. "Tumhare baap ki jaydad hai ... tum apna kaam karo," the SI allegedly said (mind your own work, this is not your father's property). By the time Dr Naseer reached the site, the SP MLA 's private demolition squad had left the scene.

It took Dr Naseer more than 48 hours to get the FIR lodged that too only on the intervention of the district police chief Rajesh Pandey after a delegation of Private Practitioner's Association threatened to bring all the medical services in state to a grinding halt if action was not initiated on the ACMO's complaint. The president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), Rae Bareli, Dr Vipin Dwivedi, and president of the UP Provincial Medical Services Asscoation Dr Ashok Yadav have expressed serious concern on the issue. "If this is how politicians make mockery of law and treat a class-I gazetted officer, it is anybody's guess what happens with the common man," said Dr Ashok Tadav talking to the TOI. He said the association will take up the issue with the state government.

In the backdrop of the entire incident is a meeting of MLA Akela's three sons with Dr Naseer some time back. "They came to me and started demanding Rs 20 lakh on the grounds that I had encroached on someone else's land. When I showed them the sale deed of the land that I had purchased way back in 1998 from its registered owner, they said they will not let me construct the house till the money is paid," Dr Naseer told the senior police officers. He also showed them copy of the complaint he had lodged with the police against the MLA sons when they had threatened him.

Allegations are that the SP MLA's sons had first approached the person who had sold off the land to Dr Naseer asking him to pay Rs 20 lakh to them as the site was under "their area of influence". When the original owner of the land told them he had sold off the land 15 years ago, the accused then approached Dr Naseer. "Even if we believe for a moment that I was getting the construction done on another plot, who are they to move around with a bulldozer demolishing private property," questioned another doctor of Rae Bareli.

SP MLA's eldest son and district president of the SP's youth wing Lohia Vahini, Vikrant Akela, however, claimed that the ACMO was making false allegations. "He has purchased another piece of land in the area and was constructing his house on a different piece of land," he said adding: "We will put up our case before the police and I am sure justice will prevail," said Vikrant.

