New Delhi: The killing of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother on Saturday night while on police escort in Prayagraj by assailants posing as journalists who shot them at point-blank range when the duo was being taken for a medical check-up, has sparked a huge controversy surrounding extra-judicial killings.
The whole incident was captured on camera and live-streamed. Several leaders have condemned the televised killing of the politician which took place days after his son Asad and his aide Ghulam were killed in an encounter killing by the UP police.
In a press release issued by the CPI(M) dated April 16, the party expressed shock at the ‘coldblooded televised assassination’ of Atiq and Ashraf and came down heavily on Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh stating that the killings show the ‘complete collapse of rule of law’ in the state.
While the BJP government in UP brags about the frequent use of ‘extra-judicial killings that are passed off as encounters’ and celebrated as the most ‘effective antidote against crime’, the police merely stood as silent spectators when Atiq and Ashraf were shot down till the ‘assassins surrendered after finishing their assignment’, the statement said.
The party took a jibe at the Yogi Adityanath government citing how the state machinery discharged its role in providing protection to Ahmed. The Chief Minister had been openly threatening to finish off Atiq Ahmed prompting the latter to appeal to the Supreme Court to seek protection, said the press release.
Ahmed had moved the Supreme Court seeking protection saying that he feared he might be killed. However, the court had dismissed his plea observing that since he was already in police custody, the state would take care of him.
‘In 2006 Yogi Adityanath, then MP from Gorakhpur, had wept in Parliament complaining to then Speaker Somnath Chatterjee against his alleged persecution in Uttar Pradesh. Now in power, his government has unleashed an unbridled reign of terror, vendetta and persecution on his opponents. The assassination of Atique Ahmed, who too, like Yogi Adityanath, was a member of Parliament (from Phulpur) during 2004-2009, just shows how the rule of law has taken a complete beating and lawlessness has been institutionalised as governance supported by the twin props of rampaging bulldozers and extra-judicial 'encounters', the statement by CPI (M) said.
The collapse of rule of law makes life ‘increasingly insecure for all citizens regardless of religion and caste’, it further said.
The killing of Vivek Tiwari, a marketing executive with Apple in Lucknow, by the police on 29 September 2018, the murder of Ghaziabad journalist Vikram Joshi on 20 July 2020 and the lynching of transport manager Shivam Johri in Shahjahanpur on April 12, 2023, are just three chilling instances of the reign of terror and impunity that governance has been reduced to in Uttar Pradesh under the stewardship of Yogi Adityanath, the statement added.