Judicial Panel Gives Clean Chit to UP Police in Killings of Atiq Ahmed's Son, Three Others

New Delhi: A two-member judicial commission has upheld the claim of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Police that the four men linked to former member of parliament Atiq Ahmed, including his son Mohammad Asad Khan, were shot dead last year in genuine "encounter" shootings.

The probe commission further said that it found “no malice, personal interest, conspiracy or fault” of the policemen in the three separate “encounter” incidents last year.

In this article, the word “encounter” is kept in quotes, as what the state and police freely advertise as “encounters” have often been termed as extra-judicial staged killings by critics and human rights activists.

In a detailed report, a copy of which is with The Wire, the judicial commission said that it found the three “encounters”, which took place in February, March and April last year, to be “real and beyond doubt”. The commission concluded it was “clear that none of the police parties involved in the encounter encroached on the right of self-defense.”

The three incidents – in which four persons were shot dead by police – took place in the aftermath of the murder of Krishna Kumar Pal alias Umesh Pal and his two police bodyguards on February 24, 2023 in Prayagraj. Pal and constables Sandeep Nishad and Raghavendra Singh were shot at and also had bombs hurled at them in an attack that was captured on camera.

Pal, a lawyer and district panchayat member, was a key witness to the murder of Bahujan Samaj Party MLA Raju Pal in 2005. Former Samajwadi Party MP Atiq Ahmed, his brother Ashraf, Atiq’s wife Sahista Parveen, Atiq’s aide Guddu ‘Muslim’ and Atiq’s sons and other associates were named in the FIR related to Umesh Pal’s murder.

The first “encounter” following Umesh Pal’s murder took place just three days after it, on February 27, 2023. Police shot dead an accused, Arbaaz, in the Nehru Park area in Bhumanganj, Prayagraj. The second “encounter” took place on March 6, 2023 when another accused in the Umesh Pal case, Vijay Kumar Chaudhary alias Usman, was killed by police in Kaundhiyara area of Prayagraj. A third “encounter” took place on April 13, 2023 in Jhansi when the UP Police Special Task Force shot dead Mohammad Asad Khan and Mohammad Ghulam. Asad was Atiq’s son.

According to the police, Asad was the prime accused in the Umesh Pal murder case as CCTV footage had shown him firing indiscriminately at Pal. In all three cases, police claimed, as is the case in almost all “encounters,” that the accused persons fired at them first, following which police fired retaliatory shots in self-defence.

The genuineness of the “encounters” was widely questioned and the government instituted a judicial commission of inquiry to investigate them. Rajiv Lochan Mehrotra, a retired judge of the Allahabad High Court, and Vijay Kumar Gupta, former Director General of Police, UP, were part of the probe panel as chairman and member, respectively. The commission submitted its report to the state government, which tabled it in the Assembly on August 1.

The Commission said the “veracity” of the three “encounter” incidents was proved by the medical examination, post mortem reports of the deceased and the evidence of the examined scientists of the Forensic Science Laboratory.

The forensic experts submitted that the injuries suffered by the deceased were from “bullets fired from distance” and that the weapons recovered from them and those carried by the police party in the incident were used for firing. The Commission also took note of reports submitted by doctors who said that the injuries suffered by the four men were “front the front” and that the “injuries” sustained by policemen were also caused by firearms. “In their reports and evidence, the doctors did not find the injuries suffered by the policemen to be self-inflicted,” noted the Commission.

The panel also said that the weapons recovered from Arbaaz and Usman during their alleged shootouts were also used in the murder of Umesh Pal.

Atiq and Ashraf, who had criminally tainted political lives, were shot dead on live television in a separate incident on April 15, 2023 by three mysterious assailants in the presence of police and media persons while they were being escorted to a hospital for a medical check-up days after being brought to Prayagraj for investigation in their alleged role in the Umesh Pal murder. Police claimed that Atiq and Ashraf had planned the murder from Sabarmati Jail and Bareilly Jail, respectively.

The two brothers were also accused of killing MLA Raju Pal due to political rivalry after Pal defeated Ashraf in a by-poll soon after his elder brother Atiq vacated the Allahabad West Assembly seat on winning the Lok Sabha election from Phulpur in 2004.

The daylight murder of Umesh Pal and two policemen dismantled the tall claims about law and order of chief minister Yogi Adtyanath, who facing severe criticism in the state Assembly, promised to “reduce this mafia to dust”.  To quote Adityanath, he infamously said in Hindi, “Iss mafia ko mitti mein mila denge.” By mafia, he meant Atiq, who was designated as a Gangster (leader of Gang IS 227) by the Adityanath government, which much before Umesh Pal’s murder, had arrested several of Atiq’s aides and demolished or seized property belonging to him worth hundreds of crores.

The judicial commission that probed the three “encounter” incidents concluded, on the basis of oral and documentary evidence and field inspection, that the firing had been initiated by the accused and that the police had given them sufficient opportunity to surrender. The “police opened fire towards the accused only in self- defence,” noted the commission, underlining that “this act of the police parties comes under the right to self-defence given to them by law”.

Atiq and Ashraf were accused of intimidating Umesh Pal into retracting his statement in the Raju Pal murder case that took place in 2005. When Umesh Pal refused to do so, the muscleman politician allegedly got him kidnapped at gunpoint – on March 28, two weeks before Atiq and Ashraf were gunned down, Atiq and two others were convicted in this case that ran from 2007.

Umesh Pal was murdered four days before the verdict was pronounced while he was returning home from court. The armed guards who were shot dead along with Umesh Pal had been provided to him following his alleged kidnapping.

Double murder of Atiq and Ashraf

Meanwhile, a separate five-member judicial commission probing the double-murder of Atiq and Ashraf concluded that the incident was not a “pre-planned conspiracy” carried out by police officers and officials of the Uttar Pradesh government.

The probe commission led by retired Allahabad high court Chief Justice Dilip Babasaheb Bhonsle said that it did not find any “connection,” “clue”, “material” or “circumstance” to show that the police system or government was involved and argued that the double-murder of the two Muslim politicians was a sudden incident and could not have been prevented. It was not a “pre-planned act carried out on the directions” of the state officials and police officers or due to “negligence,” the commission said, giving a clean chit to the state machinery.

Atiq was elected as an MLA five times in a row from 1989, thrice as an independent, from Allahabad West seat, before he went on to become an MP from one of the most erstwhile prestigious constituencies, Phulpur, which gave India its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Earlier this year, when Samajwadi Party MLA Pooja Pal, Raju Pal's widow, stunned everyone when she voted for the BJP in the Rajya Sabha election, she said she did so to a gesture of gratitude towards Adityanath for addressing her "agony and pain" and that of her community.

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