Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 16: Posing as media persons, three men armed with camera in one hand and firearms hidden under their dress, gunned down the gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Khalid Azeem alias Ashraf, both accused in the lawyer Umesh Pal murder, under full glare of camera and in the presence of a dozen policemen outside a hospital complex in Prayagraj on Saturday evening.
The Uttar Pradesh government immediately constituted a three-member judicial commission to inquire into the murder of the criminal-turned political, a former member of the Lok Sabha and five time member of the UP state Assembly representing different parties, and his brother.
The commission will be headed by high court judge (retired) Arvind Kumar Tripathi while retired judge Brijesh Kumar Soni and former DGP Subesh Kumar Singh will be its members, Special DG, Law and Order, Prashant Kumar said. The commission will have to submit its report to the government within two months, they said, adding the State home department has constituted the commission under Commission of Inquiry Act, 1952. He said the three assailants were arrested from the spot and a detailed probe is on in the matter.
The 62-year old Atiq Ahmed and his brother were shot dead at point-blank range by three men posing as journalists in the middle of a media interaction on Saturday night while police personnel were escorting them to a medical college in Prayagraj for a routine check-up.
The brothers, both jailed in Prayagraj, were in handcuffs when they were killed in full view of camera crews. The horrifying visuals were circulated widely on social media platforms and television channels. After the Prayagraj incident, the Chief Minister convened a high-level meeting in Lucknow and ordered the probe, Kumar said. Prohibitory orders were also issued in some of the areas to maintain law and order, Director Information Shishir said.
Briefing reporters in Prayagraj, Commissioner of Police Ramit Sharma said the three assailants had joined the group of media persons who were trying to get sound bites from Ahmed and Ashraf.
“As per mandatory legal requirement, Atiq Ahmed and Ashraf were brought to the hospital for medical examination. According to preliminary information, three persons posing as journalists approached them and opened fire. Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf were killed in the attack. The attackers have been held and are being questioned,” Sharma said. In the incident, Constable Man Singh suffered an injury to his arm and a journalist was hurt after he fell during the commotion that followed the shooting, the officer said.
The former Samajwadi Party MP was killed hours after the last rites of his son Asad Ahmed who was killed in a police encounter in Jhansi two days ago and was cremated in Prayagraj on Saturday which Atiq, however, was not permitted to attend. The Prayagraj shooting was captured live on camera, as mediapersons were following the handcuffed duo being taken to the Calvin Hospital.
Police Commissioner Sharma said the assailants had come on motorcycles posing as mediapersons. They were able to get near the duo on the pretext of recording a news byte and fired at them from close range. Ahmed and his brother sustained bullet injuries to the head and were declared dead by doctors later in the night. The U.P. police detained three alleged assailants, identified as Lovelesh Tiwari, Arun Maurya and Sonu, on the spot and seized three firearms. One of the alleged attackers shouted the slogan ‘Jai Shri Ram’, as he was being apprehended by the police.
Atiq Ahmed and his brother, also a former MLA, had been taken into police custody on April 13 in connection with the February 24 murder of Umesh Pal the key witness in the 2005 murder of Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Raju Pal. The investigators had kept the brothers at the Dhoomanganj police station.
The police have invoked Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code in the Chakiya, Kareli and Dhoomanganj areas of Prayagraj to maintain law and order in the city, prohibiting assembly of more than four persons. Special Director General (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar reached the residence of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to brief him about the incident.
A high-level meeting took place at the Chief Minister’s residence late night, which was attended by the Director General of Police (DGP) U.P., Director General (Law and Order) Prashant Kumar and other senior State officials. The Home Department also alerted all senior officials at district and divisional level across the State.
The Opposition lashed out at the State government, with SP president Akhilesh Yadav alleging that crime had reached its zenith in the State. “Crime has reached its peak in U.P. and the morale of the criminals is high,” he tweeted in Hindi. “When someone can be killed in firing openly amidst the security cordon of the police, then what about the safety of the general public. Due to this, an atmosphere of fear is being created among the public, it seems that some people are deliberately creating such an atmosphere,” he added.
The BSP alleged that such an incident could not have happened without approval “from the top”. In a tweet, BSP Lok Sabha MP Kunwar Danish Ali said, “Cold blooded murder of Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf is the height of anarchy in Uttar Pradesh! This can’t happen without a go ahead from the top. In any other democracy the state government must have been dismissed for such a heinous crime against the rule of law.”
On February 25, Adityanath had asserted in the State Assembly, “Mafia ko mitti mei mila denge (we will destroy the criminals). “ He was responding to Yadav’s allegation that the murder of Umesh Pal symbolised the deterioration of law and order in the State.
Atiq Ahmed faced more than 100 criminal cases, and was among the first U.P. politicians booked under the Gangster Act in the late 1980s. He was elected as a member of the Vidhan Sabha from the Allahabad West constituency in 1989, standing as an independent candidate. He retained the seat for a record four terms between 1989 and 2004, when he was elected as a Lok Sabha member from the Phulpur constituency, once represented by Jawaharlal Nehru.
In the volatile electoral polity of the State during the 1990s — a decade in which no Chief Minister completed his tenure and President’s Rule was imposed thrice — Ahmed leveraged his political clout to develop a syndicate which was an active player in the real estate market amid allegations of forced capture of properties in Allahabad and other crimes.
Questions, however, have been raised why the duo were being taken by the police for routine medical check-up so late in the evening, why they were being taken in jeeps instead of the riot vehicle as they were while being produced in the court, why the vehicles were stopped outside the compound and being walked down to the hospital instead of driving through inside the compound. The number of policemen, just about a dozen or so, accompanying the high-profile criminals whose gang members were believed to be on the prowl to get them freed, has also raised eyebrows about the security arrangements.
The UP chief minister again held a big meeting in Lucknow via video conferencing with all District Magistrates and Superintendents of Police. Contrary to earlier reports, no action has been taken on cops so far. Internet services have been suspended in some areas of Prayagraj, where the gangster-turned-politician was killed.
Sources say the state government has submitted a report to the Home Ministry regarding yesterday’s incident after a high-level meeting between Sanjay Prasad, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) and the Chief Minister, along with other top officials of the UP Police.
The three accused — Lovelesh Tiwari, Sunny Singh, and Arun Maurya — have criminal antecedents, and their families have distanced themselves from them. Lovelesh Tiwari was jailed earlier as well. His father told the media that the family has nothing to do with him. “He is my son. We saw the incident on TV. We are not aware of the actions of Lovelesh nor do we have anything to do with this. He never lived here, and neither was he involved in our family affairs. He did not tell us anything. He came here five to six days ago. We have not been on talking terms with him for years. There is already a case registered against him. He was jailed in that case,” Yagya Tiwari, Lovelesh’s father, said.
“He doesn’t work. He was a drug addict. We have four children. We have nothing to say about this,” Yagya Tiwari added. Lovelesh was shot in the leg during cross firing by his co-accused, and is being treated at a Prayagraj hospital.
Sunny has 14 cases registered against him, and has been on the run since being declared a history-sheeter. His father had died, and he left home after selling off his share of the ancestral property. Sunny hasn’t visited his family, his mother and brother, for over five years now. His brother runs a tea stall.
“He used to wander around and did no work. We live separately and don’t know how he became a criminal. We have no idea about the incident,” Pintu Singh, brother of shooter Sunny Singh, said.
The third shooter, Arun, had left home as a child. His name appeared in connection with the murder of a policeman on a train in 2010, sources said. He worked at a factory in Delhi. The three were staying at a lodge in Prayagraj.
The accused told the police during questioning that they wanted to become notorious criminals, which is why they murdered Atiq. There are gaps in their testimonies, and the police say they will continue investigating. “We wanted to kill Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf with the aim of completely wiping off the Atiq-Ashraf gang and making a name for ourselves,” the FIR quoted the arrested assailants as telling the police.
“The moment we received an update about Atiq and Ashraf being taken into police custody, we planned to kill them by posing as local journalists and blending with the crowd,” the FIR quoted their confession. They were carrying three fake media identity cards, a camera, and a mic.
The three assailants had followed Atiq and Ashraf all day, posing as journalists with fake identification cards and a camera, sources said on Sunday, suggesting a carefully planned murder. According to the police, the assailants, Lovelesh Tiwari, Sunny and Arun Maurya, have confessed about their crime.
They arrived in Prayagraj on Thursday and stayed at a lodge. The manager of the lodge is being questioned by the police. The killers have said they planned the attack after learning that the brothers were in police custody and were being taken to a hospital for a medical check-up.
They decided that posing as journalists was how they could get very close to Atiq and tracked him all day on Saturday with other journalists. According to witnesses, the three men approached Atiq and Ashraf outside the Motilal Nehru Divisional Hospital in Prayagraj around 10 pm, when the handcuffed men were being escorted in from the gates.
They pretended to be part of the media scrum with guns tucked in and then opened fire at close range. Arun Maurya fired the first bullet from point-blank at Atiq’s head. More than 20 rounds were fired by the killers and not one from the police. Atiq and Ashraf died on the spot.
The police have said they recovered three fake media ID cards, a microphone and a camera from the assailants. The assailants surrendered to the police after the shooting and were arrested. Lovelesh was hit by one of the bullets on his foot and is in hospital.
From calling it “brazen anarchy in the state” to demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Opposition parties on Sunday came down heavily on the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government over the killing of the criminal duo.
While maintaining that criminals should be given the harshest of punishment, the Congress said it should be done under the rule of law and subverting or violating the rule of law was dangerous for democracy. “Whoever does this, or gives protection to those who do such acts, should also be held responsible and the law should be strictly enforced on them. It should be our collective endeavour to ensure that the judicial system and rule of law are at all times honoured in letter and spirit,” said Congress general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was shocked by the “brazen anarchy and total collapse of law and order in Uttar Pradesh”. She tweeted, “It is shameful that perpetrators are now taking the law into their own hands, unfazed by the police and media presence. Such unlawful acts have no place in our constitutional democracy.”
All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi alleged that the Uttar Pradesh government had a role in the killings and demanded a Supreme Court-monitored investigation into the matter. “No officer from Uttar Pradesh should be included in the committee. This was a ‘cold-blooded’ murder,” he said, adding that people celebrating the killing were “vultures.”
Owaisi said the incident raises a big question about the law-and-order situation in the state and demanded the resignation of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. “I have always been saying that the BJP in Uttar Pradesh is not running the government by the rule of law but by the rule of gun.”
Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress’s UP in-charge, without taking any names, tweeted: “Criminals should be given the harshest punishment, but it should be according to the law of the land. Playing with or violating the rule of law and the judicial process for any political purpose is not right for our democracy.”
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said courts were there to ensure criminals get the harshest punishment, adding that “playing with law and order only gives birth to anarchy.” Raising questions about the law-and-order situation of Uttar Pradesh, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) leader Sanjay Raut said, “It is serious if a murder takes place in broad daylight under the supervision of the police.”
In a sharp attack on the BJP, TMC MP Mahua Moitra said “BJP has turned India into a mafia republic”. She tweeted, “Jungle Raj under BJP Yogi govt in UP. Its USP: Encounter killings, Bulldozer politics & patronising criminals. Enforce rule of law; apprehend perpetrators & punish them stringently.” Moitra also said she could believe the BJP “got the shooting done” to “deflect attention” from repercussions of the Satyapal Malik interview in which he flagged lapses on part of the government in the lead-up to the Pulwama attack in 2019.
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) MP Supriya Sule called Ahmed’s killing a “horrifying” incident for children and women. “We ask children to watch tv and news channels to increase their general knowledge, but the way crime was shown live on national television was ‘horrifying’ for children and women,” she said.
Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot said “such incidents can happen with anyone if there is no rule of law”. He added, “The country is watching what is happening in Uttar Pradesh.” Gehlot, however, warned mafia and gangsters active in his state that their fate could also be the same as Atiq’s.
Commenting on the killing, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) MP Manoj Jha called the head of UP administration “incompetent” and said “it is not a murder of a person but of the process of law.” “Bapu was killed, there was a trial, Indira Gandhi was killed there was a trial, Rajiv Gandhi was killed there was a trial, what kind of process is this… to kill an alleged goonda, goondaism is being resorted to. We are not living in the medieval ages,” Jha said.
The person who is the head of the Uttar Pradesh administration is incompetent, he said slamming Adityanath.
Alleging that Uttar Pradesh has “slipped into anarchy and jungle raj,” PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti said, “Cold blooded murders and lawlessness is being celebrated by rabid right wingers amidst slogans of Jai Shri Ram.” She also alleged that Atiq Ahmed’s murder was a “clever diversionary tactic” to shift attention from the “revelations” made by former Jammu and Kashmir governor Satyapal Malik about the Pulwama attack.
In an interview with a news portal, Satya Pal Malik had claimed that after the Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed just before the 2019 Parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to stay silent over some alleged lapses he had flagged.
