New Delhi: The Supreme Court, a day ago, refused to intervene in the Allahabad high court’s judgement reaffirming the acquittal of Union minister Ajay Mishra ‘Teni’ in the murder case of Samajwadi Party youth leader Prabhat Gupta in 2000.Teni, the member of parliament from Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh, holds the Union minister of state for home affairs portfolio in the Narendra Modi government.On Monday (January 8), a division bench of Justices Bela M. Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal dismissed a special leave petition (SLP) filed by the deceased’s brother, Rajeev Gupta, against the high court judgment.Senior counsel Kapil Sibal appeared for Gupta.The Supreme Court bench said that after having heard Sibal “at length and after carefully perusing the material placed on record, we are not inclined to interfere with the concurrent findings of facts recorded by the two Courts.”Since the UP government did not file an SLP in the Supreme Court challenging the high court’s judgement despite Gupta’s requests, he approached the top court last year.On May 19, 2023, the high court upheld the acquittal of Teni and three others in the 23-year-old murder case.It dismissed the criminal appeal and revision appeal filed against their acquittal by a sessions court in Lakhimpur Kheri in 2004.While upholding the trial court verdict, the high court said the “prosecution has utterly failed to establish the chain of events which can be said to exclusively lead to the one and only conclusion, i.e., the guilt of the accused persons.”Also read: Who Was Ajay Mishra Before He Became a Legislator?A division bench of Justices Attau Rahman Masoodi and Om Prakash Shukla noted that the “evidence recorded in the present case has been appreciated in its correct perspective and the trial court has at no point of time missed the woods of the tree.”“This court has also recorded its independent finding and holds that the theory put forth by prosecution that the four accused persons were liable for causing death of the deceased is unconvincing and shorn of evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt,” said the high court bench.Rajeev Gupta, who has fought a long battle to get justice for his brother, was again left disappointed after the Supreme Court dismissed his SLP.“If the highest authority in the country, the SC, will not interfere, then where will people like us go for justice? Where will the victims go?” Gupta asked while speaking to The Wire.SC bench On December 6, 2023, the advocate on record for the petitioner, Pragya Baghel, had written to the Supreme Court Registrar (Listing) requesting it to pass “appropriate orders” so that the matter could be heard on the next day of listing before the bench presided by Justice Aniruddha Bose.As per the rules framed by the Supreme Court, the matter should have been listed before Justice Bose, said Baghel.The matter was, however, heard by Justices Trivedi and Mithal.The murder case dates back to 2000, when Teni, today a prominent and controversial minister in the NDA government, was a BJP worker in the Terai district of Lakhimpur Kheri and was yet to enter state-level electoral politics.According to the FIR, Prabhat Gupta and Teni had a rivalry over panchayat elections and on July 8, 2000, when Prabhat Gupta was going to his shop from his house, he was shot at on his temple and between his chest and abdomen.He fell on the ground and died, said the revision petition filed by his father, Santosh Gupta (now deceased), in the high court in 2004 following the trial court acquittal.Teni and three of his associates were accused of the crime.The accused told the court they had been falsely implicated due to political rivalry and enmity over the panchayat elections.The legal battle in the high court was a long-drawn affair marked by adjournments and judicial delays. It took almost two decades for a judgement to finally be pronounced against the trial court verdict of 2004.On May 19 last year, the high court dismissed the government appeal filed by the state of UP and the revision appeal filed by Prabhat Gupta’s father.The Prabhat Gupta murder case had been long forgotten, until Teni got engulfed by the incident of the mowing down of farmers by a convoy of cars linked to him on October 3, 2021 in Lakhimpur Kheri.He sprung into the spotlight for the wrong reasons after his son Ashish Mishra alias Monu and his associates were accused of murdering four farmers in Tikonia by mowing them down under their SUVs.A total of eight persons were killed in the incident.Three BJP workers, including a driver, who were caught by the enraged mob of protesting farmers were killed in retaliation.A local scribe, Raman Kashyap, there to cover a farmers’ protest against controversial statements made by Teni, was also mowed to death by the SUVs.Also read: ‘Sack Ajay Mishra; Release Jailed Farmers’: Demands That Echoed the 75-Hour Agitation in LakhimpurWhile Teni’s son Monu was the prime accused in the incident, the minister also found himself under the scanner after it surfaced that it was his provocative statements that had allegedly triggered the protests by farmers on the said day.On September 25, 2021, while warning protesting farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri, known as the sugar bowl of UP, to “mend themselves” or else he would not take more than two minutes to mend them himself, Teni had also reminded them of his past record before he was elected a public representative and said that he did “not run from any challenge.”His past record, the farmers construed, referred to the murder charge against him.However, responding to questions on his past record a few days after the Tikonia incident of 2021, the Union minister stated that “all cases against me had concluded in my favour.”He said the cases lodged against him in the past were “fake” and attempts to implicate him had “failed”.Before he was elected an MLA in 2012 and MP in 2014 and 2019, Teni served as the vice-president of the district cooperative bank from 2000 to 2005 and was a member of the Kheri zilla panchayat from 2005 to 2010.