india

Updated: Jan 31, 2020 12:27 IST

The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Yogi Adityanath government to respond to a petition against the Uttar Pradesh administration’s move to confiscate property of people who protested against the amended citizenship law last month.

Parwaiz Arif Titu, a lawyer who had petitioned the top court, also asked the Supreme Court to order a judicial inquiry into the violence that took place in the state during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, or CAA.

The petitioner has alleged that the the UP administration was going ahead arbitrarily order seizure of property of people to deliver on Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s promise to take revenge on the protesters for political reasons.

In his first reaction after violence broke out last month, news agency PTI had quoted the chief minister as saying: “We will take revenge from them by seizing their property”.

“Those who are found guilty, their properties will be confiscated and the damage done to public property will be recovered by auctioning them [troublemakers’ properties],” he said.

The petitioner underscored that the people whose properties have been ordered to be seized were from a particular community.

He said 925 people arrested for the protests may not easily get bail in Uttar Pradesh till they pay up for the loss claimed by the government. They can only be given conditional bail after they deposit an amount equal to the quantified laws, the petition stated.

The petition said the UP government had chosen to go by what it described as a “flawed” verdict of the Allahabad High Court though the top court had clearly laid down the procedure that had to be followed.

The petitioner had also presented some notices that had been issued. It is clear that people who had been sent notices had not even been booked in criminal cases. “There is no detail of any crimes committed by them,” the petition said.