Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Apr 18: The murder of the gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf under the camera glare and in the presence of police personnel, is being claimed to have brought an end to the mafia raj in Uttar Pradesh.
The UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath said on Tuesday that no mafia or criminal could threaten industrialists in Uttar Pradesh anymore. The statement coming days after the shocking murders of gangster Atiq Ahmed and his brother prompted a wave of criticism over the state’s law and order situation.
The Chief Minister was addressing an event to mark the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for setting up textile parks in Lucknow and Hardoi districts. The textile parks are being set up under the PM Mega Integrated Textiles and Apparel (PM Mitra) scheme. “Now, a professional criminal or a mafia cannot threaten an industrialist over the phone,” he said as the audience broke into a round of applause.
The killers of Atiq and Asharf, the three men who surrendered to the police after shooting the gangster duo dead, were inspired by jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, sources have said. The three killers were identified by the police as Lovelesh Tiwari, Sunny Singh and Arun Maurya. They came posing as journalists and shot Ahmed and his brother at point-blank range while they were speaking to reporters in Prayagraj.
According to sources, the shooters made some big disclosures during their interrogation. The entire operation to kill Ahmed was planned by Sunny Singh who watched interviews and videos of Bishnoi. Singh reportedly got heavily influenced by Bishnoi’s communally charged speeches and dreamt of a “big kill” like that of musician Sidhu Moose Wala who was gunned down allegedly by members of Bishnoi’s gang on May 29 last year.
Singh is the most dangerous of the three men who shot Ahmed with more than a dozen cases registered against him. It was Singh who brought Tiwari and Maurya together to carry out the shootout, sources have said. The three were sent to judicial custody for 14 days after they were produced in a court over the weekend. They were initially kept in Prayagraj’s Naini Jail but were transferred to Pratapgarh Jail over security concerns on Monday.
But Yogi Adityanath asserted “Uttar Pradesh now guarantees effective law and order arrangements. “Uttar Pradesh was notorious for riots. Just the names of many districts scared people. Now there is no need to be scared,” the Chief Minister said. He claimed that the state witnessed more than 700 riots between 2012 and 2017. “But not a single riot broke out in UP between 2017 and 2023, no curfew was imposed. That situation did not arise. And this is the most conducive opportunity to invest and set up industries in UP,” he said.
This was even as the murders of Atiq and Ashraf which took place while the two were accompanied by a police team and have exposed glaring security loopholes, have triggered strong remarks on the state’s law and order situation. Questions are being raised over police’s preparations and response to such emergency situation with over dozen policemen armed with modern weapons does not fire even a single round at the assailants despite around 20 rounds fired from their three foreign-made revolvers.
Main opposition Samajwadi Party has hit out at the state government over the murders that took place on live TV as Atiq was addressing the press. “Crime has reached its peak in UP and the morale of the criminals is high. When someone can be killed openly despite being surrounded by a security cordon, one can imagine the state of the general public. Due to this (alleged encounter killings), an ambience of fear is being created among the public. It seems that some people are deliberately creating such an ambience,” Akhilesh Yadav, Leader of Opposition in Assembly and chief of Samajwadi Party, tweeted.
Amid the criticism, the state government has ordered a high-level probe into the murders. UP police, too, have formed a three-member Special Investigation Team to look into the incident. The matter has also reached the Supreme Court. The court has decided to hear a petition seeking an independent probe into the killings of the gangster and his brother. The petitioner has also urged the court to look into the growing trend of encounter killings by UP police. “Such actions by police are a severe threat to democracy and rule of law and lead to a police state,” the petition has stated.
Meanwhile, a letter by Atiq Ahmad with instructions to send it to the UP chief minister and the chief justice of India in case of his death was being dispatched to them, Atiq’s lawyer said on Tuesday. “That letter in a sealed envelope is neither with me nor sent by me. It is kept somewhere else and being sent by some other person. I don’t know the contents of the letter,” said his lawyer Vijay Mishra.
Atiq had said that if there were any mishap or if he was murdered, “the letter in the sealed envelope should be sent to the chief justice of India and Uttar Pradesh chief minister,” Mishra said.
Atiq was brought to Prayagraj from Gujarat and Ashraf from Bareilly prisons for interrogation in connection with the killing of Umesh Pal and his two police security guards earlier this year. Atiq had also moved the Supreme Court for protection, claiming that he and his family have been falsely implicated in the Umesh Pal murder case and he might be killed in a fake encounter by the UP Police.