Lucknow lawyer killed in bomb attack, Colleagues on strike

Lucknow, Jan 22 (IANS) Lawyers in the state capital went on strike Thursday and locked the court premises following the death of a lawyer in a bomb attack late Wednesday night.

Unidentified assailants had attacked Nikhilendra Kumar Gupta (35) near PGI with crude bombs, injuring him. Gupta died early Thursday in hospital during treatment. As lawyers and people in the locality took to the streets after the attack, security was beefed up across the city.

Lashing out at the state government over the killing of Gupta, the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Laxmikant Bajpayi, said the state capital had in fact become a crime capital.

"In the last two months alone there have been more than 36 murders and over two dozen big and small loots in the city. The bomb attack on the lawyer only signals the lawlessness that is unfolding right under the nose of the government," he told IANS.

He also accused the Akhilesh Yadav government of patronizing all the wrong officials and turning a blind eye to the problems of the people and the spiralling crime graph.

The people of Uttar Pradesh are neither safe in their homes, on the streets nor in jails where many have been killed in the past few months, the BJP leader said.