Family members of the Sonbhadra clash victims on Saturday met Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra at the Chunar guesthouse in Mirzapur district, where she spent a night in detention.

12 members of the affected families met the Congress general secretary at the guesthouse, senior party leader Ajay Rai said.

Priyanka Gandhi was stopped from going to Sonbhadra and detained on Friday.

She spent the night at the guesthouse, turning down all requests of the local administration to return without meeting the families of the clash victims.

In a series of late-night tweets, the 47-year-leader said Braj Bhushan, Varanasi Additional Director General of Police, along with other senior government officials, came to meet her at around 12 am at Chunar Fort, where she was taken after she was stopped earlier on Friday.

“UP Government sent Varanasi ADG Brish Bhushan, Varanasi Commissioner Deepak Agrawal , DIG Mirzapur to tell me that I should leave without meeting the affected families. They are sitting here since the last one hour. They have not explained why they have taken me in custody, they have also not handed me any papers,” Ms Gandhi, who is the Congress in-charge of eastern UP, wrote in one of the tweets in Hindi.

“According to my lawyers, my arrest is illegal in all ways. They have passed on the government’s message to me that I can’t meet the affected families,” Ms Gandhi wrote.

Priyanka Gandhi’s decision to visit Sonbhadra was seen to indicate that she planned to keep an intense focus on UP in the run-up to state polls in 2022. This is the 47-year-old leader’s second visit to UP since the national election, in which the Congress could manage just one of 80 seats despite a high-profile campaign by the Gandhi siblings.