News Date:
Uttar Pradesh: The three assailants who shot dead Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf Ahmed were remanded to judicial custody for fourteen days by the Allahabad District Court, India Today reported.
Ahmed, a former Lok Sabha MP, and his brother were killed on April 15, by attackers posing to be television reporters while they were being taken to a hospital in Allahabad for a compulsory medical check-up.
According to reports, the police apprehended the two gunmen and an accomplice at the site of the crime. They have been identified as Luvlesh Tiwari of Banda, Mohit alias Sunny of Hamirpur and Arun Kumar Maurya of Kasganj.
Atiq, who faced over 100 criminal cases, was moved from Sabarmati prison in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad to Naini prison in Allahabad in connection to the murder of Umesh Pal, the primary witness in the 2005 assassination of Raju Pal, a legislator from the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP).
On March 28, Atiq had requested the Supreme Court to grant protection for himself and his family members accused in the Umesh Pal murder case, and also challenged his transfer from Sabarmati jail to Allahabad jail for the investigation of the same case.
Atiq had expressed concern before the Supreme Court that he would be killed by the Uttar Pradesh police in a fake encounter. However, the Supreme Court dismissed Atiq’s plea, stating that Atiq was already in police custody and would be kept safe by the State’s machinery.
Notably, two days before Atiq’s death, and 14 days after the Supreme Court’s dismissal of his request, his son Asad and associate Gulam were killed in an encounter by the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) in Jhansi.
