- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Atiq Ahmed, a former Indian parliamentarian who was earlier a gangster and had several criminal cases lodged against him, was shot dead on live television along with his brother in Prayagraj in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
The 60-year-old, who was convicted of kidnapping and under police escort, was talking to reporters when he was shot several times on Saturday (15) night. Nine bullets were later found in his body, including one in the head.
#WATCH | Uttar Pradesh: Moment when Mafia-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf Ahmed were shot dead while interacting with media.
(Warning: Disturbing Visuals) pic.twitter.com/xCmf0kOfcQ
— ANI (@ANI) April 15, 2023
Three persons, who had posed as journalists, quickly surrendered after the incident and were taken to custody.
It was only days earlier that Ahmed’s teenage son Asad was killed in an encounter with the police and the former, who was denied permission to attend his son’s funeral, was buried at the same graveyard as the latter.
Several cases, including kidnapping, murder and extortion were registered against Ahmed over the past two decades.
A court also sentenced him and two others for life last month in a kidnapping case.
In the video, it was seen that Ahmed and his brother Ashraf — both in handcuffs — were speaking to the reporters on the way to hospital for a medical check-up when they were fatally shot.
In the footage that went viral on social media, Ahmed was asked whether he attended his son’s funeral and he said, “They did not take us, so we did not go.”
Those were his last words.
According to the police, the three suspected killers had arrived on two-wheelers. They also said that a journalist was also injured in the scene.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who belongs to prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, ordered a judicial probe into the killings and banned big gatherings in the state’s districts to ensure peace.
Ahmed, who was first accused in a murder case when he was 17, served as a member of Uttar Pradesh assembly between 1989 and 2003 and in 2004, he became a parliamentarian on the ticket of the Samajwadi Party for one term and he represented Phulpur, a constituency which was once held by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
In the 2019 general elections, Ahmed contested as an independent candidate against Modi from the Varanasi constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
