A team of the Uttar Pradesh Police is taking gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed to Prayagraj from Sabarmati central jail in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad on Sunday amid high-security arrangements. Ahmed, a former Samajwadi Party leader, will be produced before a court in Prayagraj that is scheduled to pass an order on March 28 in a kidnapping case in which he is an accused.
In a video shared by news agency ANI, Ahmed can be seen stepping out of the Sabarmati jail in white headgear as the team of the Prayagraj Police takes him with it.
Ahmed has been lodged in Sabarmati jail since June 2019 where he was shifted from his home state as per the Supreme Court orders in April that year.
Akhilesh Yadav says ‘vehicle could overturn’
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has suspected that Ahmed could be killed while being taken to Pragyagraj.
“The CM (Yogi Adityanath) must have told him (UP minister JPS Rathore) earlier where and how the car would be overturned. If you take help from Google and America, they will show how and when the car was overturned,” ANI quoted Akhilesh Yadav as saying when asked about Rathore’s statement “to be prepared” as Ahmed is being shifted from the Sabarmati jail.
In response, Rathore said as far as “car getting overturned” is concerned, “I just said that a criminal after being arrested by police should seat calmly in a car, so that he reaches jail safely”.
“If he thinks to run away from the car then there might be disbalance and car might overturn,” the UP minister told the news agency.
Prayagraj court order on March 28
A court in Prayagraj has set March 28 as the date to pass its order in a kidnapping case in which Ahmed is an accused, Prayagraj Police Commissioner Ramit Sharma said in the Uttar Pradesh city.
Sharma said a team of the Prayagraj Police was sent to bring Ahmed and produce him to the court there on the given date.
The gangster-turned-politician has been lodged in Sabarmati jail since June 2019 after the Supreme Court had in April that year directed that the former MP from Phulpur in UP be shifted to a high-security jail in Gujarat after he was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and assault of a real estate businessman Mohit Jaiswal while in jail.
He is named in more than 100 criminal cases, including the recent Umesh Pal murder case, police said. Among the most sensational murders in which Ahmed is allegedly involved was that of Raju Pal, the MLA from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) who was shot dead in 2005.
Umesh Pal murder case
Umesh Pal, a key witness in this murder case, was gunned down outside his residence in Prayagraj on February 24. Ahmed had early this month moved the Supreme Court for protection, claiming that he and his family have been falsely implicated as accused in the Umesh Pal murder case in Prayagraj and he may be killed in a fake encounter by the Uttar Pradesh Police.
In his plea, Ahmed said the Uttar Pradesh Police was in all likelihood seeking his transit remand and police remand to take him from Ahmedabad to Prayagraj and he “genuinely apprehends that he may be eliminated during this transit period”.
(With inputs from PTI)
