Congressmen attend last rites of party worker

Lucknow/Gorakhpur: UP Congressmen, led by state president Ajay Rai, attended the last rites of Prabhat Pandey on Thursday, who allegedly died during the party's protest in Lucknow on Wednesday. They claimed that state police attempted to stop them from travelling to Gorakhpur to participate in the cremation. Prabhat, a 31-year-old from the Sahjanwa area of Gorakhpur, had participated in the party's protest call to gherao the Vidhan Sabha on Dec 18. He was found dead by fellow workers after a continuous tug-of-war between the protesters and police on Wednesday. Prabhat was taken to the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee civil hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, and his body was sent for post-mortem. While Congress alleged that the worker died due to police brutality, the state police denied the charges. DCP central zone Raveena Tyagi said that there were no visible injuries on the body and that the post-mortem was conducted by a panel of doctors under video recording. Deputy chief minister Brajesh Pathak also visited the hospital to meet the family members and assured them of justice. On the other hand, blaming the UP govt for the death, Rai demanded a compensation of Rs 1 crore for the family, along with a govt job for the next of kin. In the early hours of Thursday, Rai and several party workers headed to Sahjanwa to attend the last rites, alleging that state police attempted to prevent them from reaching Gorakhpur. The workers' convoy, which departed late, was stopped on the Lucknow-Gorakhpur highway. As a result, they got into an argument with the police and shared videos of the incident on social media. Rai took to social media platform X to write about the incident. "Today, after reaching Gorakhpur, I paid tribute to late activist Prabhat Pandey ji, who became a victim of police brutality during yesterday's agitation. The police tried to stop us at many places along the way but failed. Police brutality has taken away one of our honest and hardworking workers. What could be more dictatorial than this? Now the public will give a befitting reply to such atrocities," wrote Rai. Earlier on Wednesday, Prabhat's uncle Manish lodged an FIR in the matter against unidentified persons. After the cremation, his father said, "He was living in Lucknow and preparing for exams. We never thought we would hear such horrible news." Meanwhile, a prayer ceremony for the deceased party worker was held at the UP Congress headquarters in Lucknow. All India Congress Committee in-charge for UP, Avinash Pande, offered floral tributes to the deceased worker and blamed the UP govt for causing an irreparable loss to both the party and Prabhat's family.
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