Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf were assassinated on Saturday. The killing of the politician who is been referred to as a gangster was captured live on camera and the video has been making headlines.
Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf were shot dead at close range by three assailants who posed as media personnel as they were being escorted to the hospital by police.
The shooting occurred in Prayagraj on Saturday, April 15 night, while the brothers were being taken for a routine medical checkup, despite the presence of heavy security and police personnel escorting them.
Watch the video below:
The death of the 62 years old former Samajwadi Party MP came after the last rites of his son Asad Ahmed, who was gunned down in a police encounter in Jhansi two days ago.
The Prayagraj shooting happened at about 10:30 p.m. and was captured live on Tv, as media persons were following the handcuffed brothers being taken to the Calvin Hospital.
According to Police Commissioner Ramit Sharma, the killers came on motorcycles posing as media persons. They were able to get near the duo on the pretext of recording news before shooting at them from close range.
Mr. Ahmed and his brother had bullet shots to the head and were declared dead by doctors later in the night.
The U.P. police have arrested three alleged assailants and they have been identified as Navin Tiwari, Arun Maurya, and Sonu. The arrest was made on the spot and three firearms were seized. One of the alleged attackers shouted the slogan ‘Jai Shri Ram’, as he was being taken by the police.
Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has also constituted a three-member judicial commission to investigate the killing.
Mr. Ahmed and his brother, a former MLA, were 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.
Atiq Ahmed Alleged Crimes
Mr. Ahmed has over 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 held 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 — Mr. Ahmed leveraged his political clout to develop a syndicate that was an active player in the real estate market amid allegations of forced capture of properties in Allahabad and other crimes.
