Indian Youth Congress members stage over the Lakhimpur Kheri incident, in New Delhi on Saturday. (Photo: PTI)

On Monday, a day after a vehicle owned by him was among three that mowed down four farm protesters in UP’s Lakhimpur Kheri, Ajay Mishra declared that there was no case pending against him. What the Lakhimpur Kheri MP chose to omit was this: There is a revision petition pending in the Allahabad High Court against his acquittal in a murder case from 2000.

Members of the family that filed the petition say they now live in constant fear. “We are taking all precautions since the opposite party is now the Union Minister of State for Home,” says Rajeev Gupta (45), a businessman in Lakhimpur Kheri. Gupta’s elder brother, Prabhat Gupta, was gunned down on July 8, 2000, “while he had stepped out for shopping”. Prabhat was 28 at the time. Mishra and three others — Subhash alias Mama, Shashi Bhushan and Rakesh alias Dalu — were booked in the case with Prabhat’s family alleging that the murder was a fallout of “political rivalry”.

With the Lakhimpur Kheri case turning into a political hot button issue ahead of the UP elections next year, the spotlight is on Ajay Kumar Mishra, the Union MoS whose son now faces a murder case. The Sunday Express traces Mishra’s journey — from the ‘Teni Maharaj’ who settled village disputes to the two-time MP who found a spot in the Union Cabinet as the sole Brahmin face from UP.