Dear Express reader, Ashish Mishra, s/o Union MoS Home, Ajay Mishra, was finally arrested late Saturday night, five days after he was named in a murder case, and a day after he skipped two summons to appear before the police. On Friday, too, the Supreme Court had said it was “not satisfied” with the steps taken by the UP government in the investigation into the deaths of eight people at Lakhimpur Kheri, including four farmers who were mowed down by a convoy of vehicles, including one owned by MoS Mishra. The case will, hopefully, be taken to a just conclusion. For now, it reverberates in the public domain in horrific videos, and in the extremely troubling questions that have been raised in its immediate aftermath by the conduct of the government in UP and at the Centre, and even by the intervention of the apex court. The Adityanath government of UP brought out the police and put up the barricades, detained some Opposition politicians while preventing others from travelling to Lakhimpur Kheri. It was following, as we pointed out in our editorial, “a playbook” and “a response pattern” vis a vis popular protest. “First, for the longest time, turn the back on it. Let the issue fester, and try to tire out the protesters, while actively seeking to delegitimise them, by labelling them ‘anti-national’ and calling them other names. Then, if matters escalate… treat it like a law and order issue in a police state”. Instead of pursuing those guilty of murder at Lakhimpur Kheri, the UP government seemed far too busy demonising and hounding leaders of Opposition parties, when it wasn’t making an attempt to blame the victim. Nor has the Narendra Modi government at the Centre done the right thing. It has still not asked its MoS Home to step down, so that the probe in a case in which his son faces murder charges can be seen to be free and fair. A few days before the killings on Sunday, the minister had made a swaggering speech hurling threats at farmers agitating against the Centre’s three farm laws, which triggered the protest at Lakhimpur Kheri that turned into a crime scene — “will sort out the protesters in 2 minutes”, MoS Mishra had said. “The minister should be asked to go, for the processes and procedures of accountability to begin, and for them to be taken to a conclusion that is not only just but also seen to be so,” we said in our editorial on Tuesday. The Supreme Court may have belatedly expressed displeasure against the UP government’s glaring lack of alacrity in pursuing and punishing the guilty of Lakhimpur Kheri, but before that, on Monday, an SC bench questioned the protesters. It raised two questions: Why must farmers continue their protest when the matter of the farm laws is in court? And, is there an absolute right to protest? Both questions seem terribly misplaced in this moment, vis a vis a protest that has, except for the January 26 aberration, been patient and peaceful in the face of the government’s stonewalling and the hurdles it has placed in its path. The SC sounds especially off-key, moreover, given the bigger picture. In principle, the citizens’ right to protest must be seen in concert with, not in opposition to, the right to constitutional remedies. And surely, this is even more so, in a political climate where spaces for dissent and disagreement are shrinking and where the government tries to label and criminalise the protester. Will justice be done, then, in Lakhimpur Kheri? Or will the processes of law, too, be held hostage to the cleaving of narratives and the whataboutery that has become such a dispiriting feature of public discourse, corroding it steadily. My fact versus your fact. My truth vs your truth. My crime versus yours? Till next week, Vandita | 
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