Prayagraj Court Awards Life Imprisonment To Mafia Atiq Ahmed In Umesh Pal Case, Acquits Brother Khalid Azim

An MP-MLA court in Prayagraj today held Mafia-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed guilty in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case. The Prayagraj MP-MLA Court sentenced Atiq Ahmed to life imprisonment besided imposing a fine of Rs 5,000 on him. According to government counsel Gulab Chandra Agrahari, judge Dinesh Chandr Shukla held Ahmaed, Saulat Hanif, a lawyer, and Dinesh Pasi guilty in the case. The three were pronounced guilty under Indian Penal Code section 364-A (kidnapping or abduction in order to murder), Agrahari said. The maximum sentence under the section is death sentence. He said that seven others including Ahmed's brother Khalid Azim alias Ashraf have been acquitted in the case. The gangster was brought to the court in a police van amid tightened security with CCTV cameras and security equipment installed in the police van. Security has been heightened at Prayagraj MP-MLA Court.

Atiq Ahmed and his brother Khalid Azim alias Ashraf were produced before the court in connection with the 2006 kidnapping of Umesh Pal, a witness in the BSP MLA Raju Pal murder case, who was killed last month in an attack allegedly orchestrated by the two.

The brothers were brought to the Naini Central Jail here on Monday, after long road journeys from two separate prisons. Security has been tightened in the court premises as well as the jail complex where the accused are lodged. Umesh Pal's wife Jaya Pal said she won't be going to the court but will "pray" that Ahmed gets capital punishment.

"I am not going to the court. I will be in my house and pray for capital punishment for Ahmed. If they get life imprisonment, they will continue to do the same things that they did with my husband," Jaya Pal told reporters.

Ahmed and Ashraf are also accused of being involved in a conspiracy, while they were both in prison, to kill Umesh Pal. After the killing of BSP MLA Raju Pal on January 25, 2005, Umesh Pal, then a zila panchayat member, had told police he was a witness to the murder.

Umesh Pal alleged that when he refused to retract and buckle under pressure from Ahmed, he was kidnapped at gunpoint on February 28, 2006. The FIR was registered on July 5, 2007, against Ahmed, his brother, and four unidentified people.

Umesh Pal was gunned down outside his Prayagraj residence on February 24.

On a complaint from Umesh Pal's wife, a case was lodged at the Dhoomanganj police station in Prayagraj against Ahmed, his brother, his wife Shaista Parveen, two sons, aides Guddu Muslim and Ghulam, and nine others.

Ahmed, a former Samajwadi Party MP from Phulpur, was shifted to the Sabarmati Central Jail in Gujarat in June 2019 following a Supreme Court order after he was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and assault of real estate businessman Mohit Jaiswal while in prison in Uttar Pradesh. He is named in more than 100 criminal cases, including the Umesh Pal murder case, police said. (With agency inputs)