UP man holds 20 kids hostage at his house, rescue ops on
LUCKNOW/KANPUR: A murder accused out on bail held hostage a group of children in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad and opened fire at policemen who laid siege to his house on Thursday, officials and eyewitnesses said.
Subhash Batham, 43, invited the children on the pretext of his daughter’s birthday party in the afternoon and locked them in, according to the police. His wife and children too are inside the house in Karsaria village, nearly 200 km from state capital Lucknow.
According to reports, there could be over 20 people inside the house, including Batham and his family.
The police had yet to make a breakthrough till the filing of this report, and said they took a cautious approach to deal with the “sensitive situation”. OP
Singh, the state’s top cop, said National Security Guard (NSG) commandos could be called in if needed.
The motive behind Batham holding the children hostage was immediately not known, but an eyewitness said he shouted from inside the house that some villagers misbehaved his wife when he was in jail. Batham was charged with the murder of a relative around two years ago, a local police official said on the condition of anonymity. He has been out on bail for the past year.
A woman went to Batham’s house around 4:30pm to get her children, but he refused to open the door, the police official quoted above said. The woman informed the police.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath called an emergency meeting of police officers, a state government spokesperson said. Adityanath, who cancelled his planned trip to Delhi, is closely monitoring the situation.
He told officials that the priority was to save the hostages.