The Supreme Court Thursday sought response from the Uttar Pradesh government on a plea seeking transfer of Hindu Samaj Party leader Kamlesh Tiwari murder case from Lucknow to Delhi.
A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde issued notice to the UP government and sought its reply in the matter.
The advocate appearing for the accused Ashfaq and others sought the court's intervention to shift the trial from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi as they feared a threat to life.
The Lucknow police had in December filed a charge sheet against 13 persons in the case.
The police had said that the two main accused, Ashfaq and Moinuddin, had been charged with murder while 11 others had been booked under other provisions of IPC, including sheltering accused, cheating, dishonesty and criminal conspiracy.
The persons named in the charge sheet are Ashfaq, Moinuddin, Rashid Pathan, Faizan, Mohsin Sheikh, Sayeed Asif, Mohd Naved, Raees Ahmad, Asif Raza, Kamran, Yusuf Khan, Zafar Sadiq and Kaifi Ali.
According to the charge sheet, the accused conspired to kill Kamlesh Tiwari who had made a disrespectful remark against Prophet Mohammad in 2015.