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Atiq Ahmed murder: Tejashwi Yadav and Nitish Kumar strongly condemned the incident Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav today denounced the Uttar Pradesh government for the killing of gangster Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf under police escort. Calling it a failure of law and order, Nitish Kumar said killing criminals is never a solution and the way they were killed saddened him.
“Eliminating crime does not mean killing criminals. The court is there to do justice,” Yadav said.
"The police should have looked after their safety. It is sad that they were shot at point-blank range when they were being taken for a medical check-up," he said.
Tejashwi Yadav also strongly condemned the incident, saying the murder of the mobster and his brother seemed "scripted".
“Even the assassins of a prime minister (Rajiv Gandhi) were tried by a court. What happened in the UP was not Atiq Ahmed's funeral procession, but that of the law," Yadav said.
"It was done for cheap publicity. The incident seemed to be scripted," he said.
Opposition parties have intensified their attacks on the Uttar Pradesh government led by Yogi Adityanath over the daring assassination.
"I am shocked by the blatant lawlessness and complete breakdown of law and order in Uttar Pradesh. It is shameful that the perpetrators are taking justice into their own hands, unimpressed by the police and media presence. These acts illegals have no place in our constitutional democracy,” Mamata Banerjee tweeted earlier.
Samajwadi party leader Akhilesh Yadav said the state was "under the rule of the jungle raj".
The prime minister was also directly attacked by Hyderabad politician Asaduddin Owaisi, who demanded his resignation and called for a Supreme Court-supervised investigation.
Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf were shot dead by three men posing as journalists in Prayagraj on Saturday night, days after mobster Assad's son was killed in an alleged encounter.
Flanked by several police officers, the men, who were handcuffed, collapsed on the spot, video of the scene showed.
Lovelesh Tewari, Sunny Singh and Arun Maurya, the three men who shot and killed Atiq and Ashraf, were detained for 14 days.
According to the police, they said they wanted to make a name for themselves by eliminating Ahmed's gang.
Yogi Adityanath has asked a three-member Judicial Inquiry Commission to submit a report on the killings in two months.
Atiq Ahmed had more than 100 criminal cases against him, including murder, kidnapping and extortion. He was recently sentenced to life in prison in a kidnapping case.
Ahmed was also a provincial MP for five terms and a former MP from the Samajwadi Lok Sabha party. He was recently sentenced to life in prison in a kidnapping case.
His brother Ashraf was also a gangster and had several cases against him.
