Asad encounter: Atique Ahmed, the don in the dust

Such was the terror of gangster-turned-politician Atique Ahmed that in 2012 as many as 10 judges of Allahabad High Court had recused themselves from hearing his bail plea. Ahmed was planning to fight assembly polls from Allahabad West constituency as a candidate of Apna Dal. Today, nearly a decade later, 61-year-old Ahmed reportedly fainted and cried when he heard the news of Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force killing his son Asad in an encounter in Jhansi.

In 2012, the eleventh judge granted him bail and Ahmed fought the election but lost to Puja Pal, the widow of Raju Pal who had dared to challenge Ahmed’s stranglehold over the Allahabad West constituency in 2004 and was murdered. Ahmed and his brother Mohammad Ashraf were the accused. This was the case that went on to become Ahmed’s nemesis.

The beginnings of Atique Ahmed
Ahmed was born in a poor family. His father used to drive a tanga (horse carriage) in Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad). Ahmed dropped out of school and took to a life of petty crime. In his late teens, he had been accused in a murder case and that was the beginning of his career as a dreaded mafia don who could scare cops, businesspersons, politicians, jailors and judges. His area of operation was Prayagraj and its surroundings. By the time he was nearing 30, Ahmed had amassed enough power, pelf and pragmatism to jump into politics.

Atique Ahmed as politician
It’s a good measure of Ahmed’s capture of local politics that he is one of the rare politicians who have won from a constituency five times in a row. His constituency was Allahabad West from where he would fight as an independent or on tickets from the Samajwadi Party or Apna Dal.

Ahmed won from Allahabad West assembly constituency in 1989 and went on to win five times till 2002. If you add to his political career his victory in 2004 from the neighbouring Phulpur Lok Sabha constituency — from where India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru won twice — you would have a politician with a rare combination of bullet as well as ballot power, for Ahmed had not jumped careers; he had just added politics to his main career of crime. Ahmed has been accused in more than 100 cases of murder, kidnapping and extortion. His moment of glory as a politician came when he was a Lok Sabha MP but lodged in jail in 2009. He was specially got out of jail to bail out the then UPA government at the Centre when it faced a no-confidence motion,

Ahmed’s political success did not mellow down Ahmed the gangster. In 2018, when he was lodged in Deoria jail, he was accused of getting a businessman kidnapped for extortion and produced before him right in the jail. No jailor would want Ahmed in his jail because he could run his enterprise of crime with ease from any jail in Uttar Pradesh. He was eventually shifted to a jail faraway in Sabarmati in Gujarat.

The Raju Pal case
The murder of Raju Pal eventually brought Ahmed down. In 2002, Ahmed had won the fifth time from Allahabad West constituency but had to vacate his seat as he fought the 2004 Lok Sabha election from Phulpur on the Samajwadi Party ticket. He planned to keep his assembly constituency under his thumb so he made his brother Ashraf contest the bypoll. However, Ashraf was defeated by BSP candidate Raju Pal. Soon after, Raju Pal was murdered. The seat that fell vacant again was won by Ashraf who defeated Raju Pal’s widow Puja Pal. Both Atique and Asharaf were named as accused in the Raju Pal murder case.

In 2006, a key witness in the Raju Pal murder case, Umesh Pal, a zila parishad member, was kidnapped by Ahmed and was made to testify in the court in Ahmed’s favour.

After losing favour with political parties, Ahmed surrendered in the Raju Pal murder case in 2008 and came out on bail in 2012, He unsuccessfully fought several elections, from inside the jail too. In 2019, he filed his papers from the Varanasi Lok Sabha Constituency to fight against Prime Minister Narendra Modi but later withdrew from the fight as he was denied parole. He still got several hundred votes.

In 2017, he was arrested in a case of assault on employees of Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (SHUATS), a Christian institution in Prayagraj. The employees were beaten up allegedly by Ahmed and his men because the institute barred two students from taking their tests after they were caught cheating. Since then, Ahmed has been in jail.

In February this year, Umesh Pal, the witness in the Raju Pal case, was shot dead, along with his two police bodyguards, in Prayagraj. His son Asad Ahmed, who was killed in an encounter by the police today, was one of the accused in the Umesh Pal murder case.

Last month, a Prayagraj court sentenced Ahmed to life imprisonment in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case. That was his first conviction in his long career as a mafia don. Today’s killing of his son is a big setback to Atique who has remained a much-feared figure even from inside the jail. The killing weakens his image of a don who could get anything or anyone fixed even from inside a jail. With the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh having turned law and order into the most important issue, often shooting criminals in encounters and bulldozing their homes, from now on it seems a downhill journey for Ahmed.