A former Indian politician convicted of kidnapping and his sibling were executed on live television. Atiq Ahmed was under police protection and speaking to reporters in Prayagraj, also known as Allahabad when a gun was drawn near to his head.
After the shots were fired on Saturday evening, three men posing as journalists swiftly surrendered and were apprehended.
Police fatally shot Ahmed’s adolescent son days earlier. Over the past two decades, dozens of cases, including abduction, murder, and extortion, have been filed against Atiq Ahmed. In March of this year, a local court sentenced him and two others to life in prison for abduction.
Ahmed had previously alleged that the police posed a threat to his life.
Ahmed and his brother, Ashraf, were captured on video speaking to journalists while en route to a hospital for a medical checkup, mere seconds before they were both slain.
In the video, which was extensively shared on social media and television, Ahmed is asked if he attended his son’s funeral.
His final words for the camera are,
“They did not take us, so we did not go.”
The three suspects arrived at the scene on motorcycles, according to the authorities. Additionally, a police officer and a journalist were injured at the site.
To ensure peace, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered a judicial investigation into the killings and prohibited large gatherings in the districts of the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Experts have questioned how a man could be murdered in front of the media and law enforcement. Anant Zanane, a BBC Hindi correspondent in Prayagraj, reported that the city was in a lockdown-like state.
Who was Ahmed Atiq?
He had a lengthy career in both politics and the criminal underworld. In 1979, he was first accused of homicide. Over the next decade, he emerged as a powerful figure in the western portion of Allahabad city.
In 1989, he won his first election as an independent candidate and was elected to the state legislature. His fourth victory was as a lawmaker for the regional Samajwadi Party (SP). Previously, he had won the office for two consecutive terms.
In 2004, he was elected to the House of Representatives as an SP candidate. In the interim, he continued to be charged in Allahabad and throughout the state.
Also, In the following decade, Ahmed contested a few more elections, but he lost each one. In 2019, India’s highest court ordered that he be transferred to a prison in the state of Gujarat after it was discovered that he had planned attacks on a businessman from prison in Uttar Pradesh where he was awaiting prosecution in another case.
In March, he was transported back to Prayagraj from Gujarat to appear before a local court as his sentence in a kidnapping case was announced.
Ahmed was also transported to the city to be questioned in connection with other cases. His jailed sibling Ashraf from the Bareilly district was also brought to the city for questioning.
They were both being questioned in connection with the February murder of Umesh Pal, a key witness in the 2005 murder of Raju Pal, a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) lawmaker.
In the 2004 assembly elections in Atiq Ahmed’s political bastion, Raju Pal defeated Ashraf. Umesh Pal was shot and murdered in February of this year by multiple individuals.
Asad, the teenage son of Atiq Ahmed, and a few others were named as the primary suspects in the assassination of Umesh Pal. Earlier this week, Asad and another man were slain by police in what was described as a shootout.
Crime has attained its highest point in UP.
Last month, the Supreme Court of India denied Ahmed’s petition alleging that the police posed a threat to his life.
The Hindu nationalist BJP governs Uttar Pradesh, and opposition parties criticized the murders as a security breach.
Akhilesh Yadav, chief of the opposition Samajwadi Party, tweeted in Hindi,
“Crime has reached its zenith in UP, and the criminals’ spirits are high.”
“What about the protection of the general public when someone can be killed by open fire within the police security perimeter? Due to this, a climate of dread is being fostered among the general public, and it appears that some individuals are intentionally fostering this climate,” he added.
In the past six years, more than 180 individuals facing various charges have been slain by police in the state.
The state’s administration denies the allegations of extrajudicial killings by the police made by activists.
They are referred to as “encounters” by the police, but many believe they have actually staged confrontations that almost always conclude with dead criminals and unharmed officers.
At least in part, police encounters are a response to India’s painfully sluggish and dysfunctional criminal justice system.
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