Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf had been beneath police escort on their solution to a medical checkup at a hospital on Saturday night time when three males posing as journalists focused the 2 brothers from shut vary in Prayagraj metropolis in Uttar Pradesh state.
The males shortly surrendered to the police after the taking pictures, with not less than one in every of them chanting “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Hail Lord Ram,” a slogan that has turn out to be a battle cry for Hindu nationalists of their marketing campaign in opposition to Muslims.
Uttar Pradesh is ruled by India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party since 2017.
Since then, over 180 individuals going through felony fees in India’s most populous state have been killed in so-called “police encounters” that rights teams say are sometimes extrajudicial killings.
Following Saturday’s taking pictures, authorities imposed a ban on the meeting of greater than 4 individuals throughout the state and in addition minimize web entry on cell phones in Prayagraj metropolis.
The authorities additionally ordered a judicial probe headed by a retired decide.
Police officer Ramit Sharma stated the three assailants got here on bikes posing as journalists.
“They managed to reach close to Atiq and his brother on the pretext of recording a byte and fired at them from close range. Both sustained bullet injuries on the head,” he stated. “It all happened in seconds.”
Multiple movies of Saturday’s taking pictures went viral on social media.
It was initially broadcast stay on native TV channels because the brothers spoke to media whereas being taken to the hospital.
The footage exhibits somebody pulling a gun near Atiq Ahmad’s head.
As he collapses, his brother can be shot. The video exhibits assailants repeatedly firing on the two males after each fell on the bottom.
Atiq Ahmad, 60, was jailed in 2019 after he was convicted of kidnapping a lawyer, Umesh Pal, who had testified in opposition to him as as a witness within the killing of a lawmaker in 2005.
In February, Pal was additionally killed.
On Thursday, Atiq Ahmad’s teenage son and one other man, each of whom had been blamed for Pal’s demise, had been killed by police in what was described as a shootout.
Two weeks earlier, Atiq Ahmad had petitioned the Indian Supreme Court for defense, saying there was an “open, direct and immediate threat to his life” from state functionaries of Uttar Pradesh, in keeping with media studies.
But the court docket declined to intervene and as an alternative requested his lawyer to method the native state court docket.
Atiq Ahmad was a state lawmaker 4 occasions and was additionally elected to India’s Parliament in 2004 from Uttar Pradesh’s Phulpur constituency, as soon as represented by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
He confronted greater than 100 felony instances and was among the many first politicians from Uttar Pradesh to be prosecuted beneath the stringent Gangster Act within the late Eighties.
He additionally cultivated a Robin Hood picture amongst principally Muslim constituents and used to financially assist many poor households.
But he was additionally criticised for leveraging his political clout to develop a syndicate that was an energetic participant in the true property market amid allegations of pressured seize of properties and different crimes.
Opposition events criticised the killings as a safety lapse and accused the federal government of ruling by worry.
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Source: www.9news.com.au
