Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Mar 28: The criminal-politician gangster Atiq Ahmed, a former MP and MLA, and two others were on Tuesday sentenced to life imprisonment after a court in Prayagraj found them guilty in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case.
The former Lok Sabha member from Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh, Ahmed and his two associates Khan Saulat Hanif and Dinesh Pasi, were convicted and given life imprisonment and ordered to pay ₹1 lakh as compensation to the family of Umesh Pal, who, however, was murdered last month.
Seven other accused, including Ahmed’s brother Khalid Azim alias Ashraf, a former MLA, have been acquitted in the case. Atiq Ahmed is also an accused in the murder of Umesh Pal, a prime witness in the 2005 murder of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Raju Pal. Umesh Pal was shot dead while he was getting out of the backseat of a Hyundai Creta SUV in Prayagraj on February 24 this year. Two police bodyguards accompanying him were also killed in the shootout.
CCTV footage showed Umesh Pal and one of his two police bodyguards getting out of the SUV when suddenly multiple shooters came from behind and fired at him. Another man could be seen using crude bombs during the assault, which exploded in a cloud of smoke, leading to panic and chaos on the road with people running to safety. Many abandoned their vehicles and ran toward shops.
The UP police have claimed that Atiq Ahmed got Umesh Pal killed as the latter had named him as the key accused in the 2005 murder. In 2006, Umesh Pal had alleged that he was kidnapped at gunpoint when he refused to retract his statement to the police. The court verdict in Prayagraj on Tuesday has come only in the 2006 kidnapping of Umesh Pal case.
Ahmed, who faces more than 100 criminal cases, stands convicted under Section 364A (kidnapping a person and the person being put in danger of being murdered) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), among others. While in the court premises, Ahmed faced protests from lawyers who demanded capital punishment for him.
Ahmed was brought from high-security Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, to Prayagraj following a 24-hour road journey by the Uttar Pradesh police on Monday. Visuals from outside the court today showed a long police cavalcade bringing the gangster-turned-politician in large vans as crowds gathered on both sides of the road.
A 45-member U.P. Police escort took over Ahmed’s custody on Sunday afternoon and brought him to Naini Central Jail, amid rising pressure to solve the case related to the Umesh Pal killing, as the five assailants who shot lawyer dead remain absconding, with the State police forced to announce a cash reward of ₹5 lakh for information leading to the arrest of each of the accused.
The State Police and Special Task Force (STF), which constituted dozens of teams to nab the accused, is said to have approached Nepal-based businessman Qayyum Ansari, apprehending that the fugitives were taking shelter, but in vain. The issue has hugely embarrassed the U.P. Police, which contacted Central intelligence agencies with ground assets in Nepal for help in finding the accused.
It is believed that some of the assailants of Umesh Pal have sneaked into neighbouring Nepal, which shares an open border with India, making it difficult to apprehend them. As the issue has become a source of embarrassment for the U.P. Police, it has contacted intelligence agencies in New Delhi, which have ground assets in Nepal, for help in finding the prime accused in the case.
The gruesome murder of Umesh Pal on February 24 during the Budget session of the Vidhan Sabha led to chaotic scenes in the State Assembly, with Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath saying the State Government would destroy the criminals, while alleging that the Samajwadi Party (SP) had nurtured such elements during its regime.
The complaint was lodged by Umesh Pal’s wife Jaya Pal. A case was registered at the Dhoomanganj Police Station in Prayagraj against Atiq Ahmed, his brother Ashraf, his wife Shaista Parveen, their two sons, and nine others. Over the course of the investigation, it come to light that the former MP’s son Asad and four other accused — Gulam, Guddu, Arman and Sabir — were allegedly the main shooters.
The U.P. Police killed the alleged car driver, Arbaaz in an “encounter” at the Nehru Park forest in Prayagraj. Vijay Chaudhary alias Usman, a shooter who allegedly fired first at Umesh Pal, was arrested within the first 15 days, as were six persons, including Sadaqat, who was accused of hatching the conspiracy, and two of Atiq Ahmed’s domestic servants. Ten illegal weapons and more than ₹74 lakh in cash were recovered following their interrogation.
Several teams of the U.P. Police and STF raided various places in States like Bihar, Delhi and Rajasthan to nab the five accused but have since shifted their focus to Nepal. It is believed the attackers had designed a foolproof plan to escape after the crime and few of them have sneaked into the Himalayan Kingdom within a day or two of the incidents.
For nearly four decades now, the 60-year-old gangster-turned-politician has had a run of the state, straddling the permeable world of crime and politics, shifting from this party to that, contesting and winning elections, even while being a certified “history-sheeter”, notching up almost 100 cases against himself and, as per the latest UP police records, running a gang with “144 members.”
Atiq is a former MP and five-time MLA, whose lawyer Vijay Mishra says trials in 50 cases against him have been pending. He was until Sunday lodged in Sabarmati Jail for allegedly assaulting faculty members of an agricultural research institute in Prayagraj in 2016.
He was shifted to the Gujarat prison in 2019 on the Supreme Court’s direction. However, that is perhaps the lesser known of the cases involving Atiq who, from the infamous guest-house incident that changed the course of the UP political history, to allegedly abducting a businessman, bringing him to a jail and getting him to sign some papers inside, is used to making more sensational headlines.
In the latest incident, on February 24, men allegedly linked to him chased down Umesh Pal and shot him dead in broad daylight – almost exactly the same way and in the same place that the first crime, Raju Pal’s murder, was committed. Apart from Atiq, his wife Shaista Parveen and their son Asad are accused in the case; both are absconding. Their two other sons are jailed in other cases.
Atiq’s first run-in with the police is recorded as back as 1984 when he was booked for attempting a murder in Prayagraj. Five years later, in 1989, Atiq won his first election as an MLA from Allahabad West, as an Independent. After he retained his seat in the next two Assembly elections as well, also as an Independent, the SP opened its doors to him.
Then, in 1995, Atiq came to notice with the guest-house incident. It involved the attack on the complex where the then Chief Minister Mayawati was staying with her MLAs. Alleged MLAs and workers of the SP surrounded the guest-house and went on a rampage, angry over the BSP having broken ties with the SP and seeking out the BJP to form the government. Mayawati had to lock herself in a room while several of her MLAs were “captured” and were later claimed to have defected to the SP.
In 1996, Atiq won from Allahabad West the fourth time, as an SP candidate. Three years later, he moved to the Apna Dal, and in 2002, again won the seat. By 2004, it was the SP again for him, and this time he won from the Phulpur Lok Sabha constituency, the seat once represented by Jawaharlal Nehru.
A year later, came the case for which Atiq finds himself in trouble now. In 2004, in the bypoll held for the Allahabad West seat, after Atiq had moved to the Lok Sabha, BSP candidate Raju Pal defeated his brother Ashraf, fighting on an SP ticket. In January 2005, Raju Pal was gunned down, along with two of his associates, and Atiq was named as an accused along with Ashraf and others. Ashraf now has 52 cases against him and is currently lodged in a Bareilly jail.
With the SP in power in the state at the time, on the Supreme Court’s orders, the case was transferred to the CBI. It filed a charge-sheet in 2019 against 10 people. Subsequently, Atiq was also booked by the agency for a 2018 incident involving the alleged kidnapping of Lucknow-based businessman Mohit Jaiswal, who was taken to Deoria district jail, where the former was lodged at the time. Jaiswal claimed he was forced to sign documents for property worth Rs 48 crore in favour of his associates. Atiq’s eldest son Mohammad Umar, who is currently lodged in a Lucknow district jail, is a co-accused in the Jaiswal case.
Atiq’s second son, Mohammad Ali Ahmed, is currently in Naini jail for alleged involvement in a case of assault on a property dealer in December 2021. The killing of Umesh is not the first time Shaista Parveen finds herself in police records. There are at least three other cases registered against her since 2019 under the forgery and arms charges at the Colonelganj police station in Prayagraj. The cases are pending in court, said a police officer.
Earlier this year, in January, Parveen joined the BSP. After the police named her in the Umesh murder case, the BSP said Parveen will be expelled if she is proven guilty. Still on the run, Parveen moved a local court in Prayagraj saying that the police had “illegally” taken away two of her minor sons – apart from the three named in police cases or in jail – on the evening of February 24 and that she had no information about them. The police later told a local court that the boys had been found in Prayagraj and were admitted to a child protection home.
Recently, Umesh’s wife Jaya met Raju’s wife Pooja, who is ironically now an SP MLA from Kaushambi, and has sought “Y” category security for herself and police protection for three eyewitnesses in her husband’s murder case. The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, which has pledged to act against the “mafia”, claims to have seized properties worth Rs 350 crore linked to Atiq. The Prayagraj district administration also says it has released properties amounting to Rs 751 crore forcibly occupied by Atiq and his associates. Besides, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is investigating a Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) case against him.
