A local court on Monday released on bail all the five people held in the case of arson and rioting at the house of UPCC chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi on July 15. Having kept them in jail for 46 days, the police failed to produce evidence against any of the accused.

While there were charges from the beginning that the five had been framed in the case — after the Congress alleged official complicity in the attack on Joshi’s house, located in a high-security area — the police had gone ahead and held them.

Now as Shiv Kumar, Guddu Yadav, Pappu, Zamir Khan and Surajjit Kumar Tiwari come out of jail, their lives are irrevocably changed. While Kumar, Guddu and Pappu were released late on Tuesday night, Khan and Tiwari are still lodged in jail as some legal formalities related to their release are yet to be completed.

Shiv Kumar’s grandmother passed away three days after his arrest, reportedly unable to bear the trauma, and he wasn’t given permission to attend the funeral. “Her last wish of seeing Papa by her side remained unfulfilled,” sobs Sonam, the eldest daughter of Shiv Kumar.

Kumar’s wife Pushpa claims that her husband, who is a taxi driver and lives in Lucknow Cantonment, was framed in the Joshi case and arrested along with their relative Guddu Yadav and neighbour Pappu when they had gone to meet the local police over a petty dispute between them on overflowing drains. “Instead of helping us, they cheated us,” Pushpa says.

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