Samajwadi Party MP Zia-ur-Rahman Barq on Wednesday told the judicial commission formed to probe the Sambhal violence that police were involved in the killing of four people during the mosque survey on November 24 last year.

“The police booked me for the violence even though I was not there. I was present there during the first survey (on November 19). Nobody raised a single slogan at that time. But violence erupted during the second survey on November 24 when I was not there. I would like the investigators and the media to use their mind and understand why it happened,” Barq told reporters in Lucknow soon before appearing before the commission.

The police claim that the four men died in a clash between two groups fighting for control of the mosque.

A local court had on November 19 ordered a survey of the Jama Masjid in Sambhal town in response to a petition that claimed it was built by demolishing a temple during Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s reign. Soon, a team of surveyors, accompanied by the police and members of the local administration, reached the mosque. Barq, the local MP, was already there. According to him, he left for Bengaluru on November 23 and the very next day violence broke out when the surveyors and the police reached the mosque without intimation for another survey.

A source close to Barq said on Wednesday: “He told the commission that some youths accompanying the survey team chanted Jai Sri Ram slogans to provoke the Muslims. Later, the police misbehaved with the Muslims who were standing outside the mosque. Some people got furious and hurled stones at the police, who replied with bullets. Four persons, all Muslims, died.”

Later in the afternoon, Barq told reporters: “The police have implicated me in the violence case with political motives. Imagine the condition of the common man in Uttar Pradesh when an MP is struggling for justice.”