Lucknow: Six youth were run over by a train engine early on Monday in Hapur district of Uttar Pradesh.

The incident occurred in Pilakhua when seven of them were loitering around a railway track. They apparently had ear phones on and were listening to music when the tragedy struck.

All were daily wagers and worked as painters. The victims were supposed to board a train from Ghaziabad for a painting contract in Hyderabad. But they missed that train and returned to Pilakhua a little after midnight.

According to eyewitnesses, they appeared disturbed and were walking dangerously close to the railway tracks near the Gandhi Gate.

Salim, Arif, Sameer, Akash, Rahul and Vijay were run over by the train engine on a 'shuttling' duty.

One person, critically injured, was admitted to a medical facility.

An angry mob started protesting at the accident site. However, senior officials, including District Magistrate Krishna Karunesh and Superintendent of Police Hemant Kutiyal, who reached the spot, pacified them and the bodies were sent for post-mortem, an official said.

 

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.