Both Asad and Ghulam had a reward of Rs 5 lakh on their heads.
New Delhi:
The police tried to catch murder accused Asad Ahmed and Ghulam, gunned down in Jhansi on Thursday by the Uttar Pradesh police, alive, they said in the First Information Report (FIR) filed soon after the encounter.
“Just as we instructed our car driver to overtake the motorcycles the two accused were trying to flee in, and loudly asked them to stop, they accelerated and tried to take a turn at a dirt road to escape, though another team had already surrounded them,” the report said, adding that they repeatedly warned the accused without success when the motorcycles slipped and fell near a babool tree.
“Asad and Ghulam took cover, started abusing the police and fired with the intent to kill,” it added.
The police said they stopped their vehicle, took cover, and walked into their firing range to try to capture the two alive “without caring for their safety”.
They had to shoot back as the accused started firing indiscriminately, the police said, adding that the firing from the other side stopped after a while when they inched closer and found Asad and Ghulam injured.
“They still showed signs of life, so we immediately sent them to a hospital in two separate ambulances, but later found out that they had died,” the FIR said.
Pistols, bullet shells, live bullets, motorcycles, and other evidence were collected from the spot, it said.
The police were on April 13 told by an informant, part of Atiq Ahmed’s gang, that Asad and Ghulam were also in Jhansi, after which they started laying a dragnet.
Asad and Ghulam were spotted approaching on two unnumbered Bajaja Discovery motorcycles from Chirgaon town in Jhansi, after which the police chased them for 1.5 km.
Asad’s body will be received by his maternal family and will be taken to a family graveyard at Kasari Masari in Prayagraj for burial in the afternoon or early evening.
Asad was the dreaded gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed’s son. Atiq and his brother Ashraf were brought to the CJM Court in Prayagraj the same morning that his son was shot dead.
On March 28, Atiq Ahmed was convicted by an MP-MLA court and sentenced to rigorous life imprisonment in the abduction case of now-dead Umesh Pal. Atiq Ahmed and his family came under the scanner as CCTV footage showed how Mr Pal was murdered by indiscriminate firing and a bomb blast. 19-year-old Asad was seen chasing Umesh Pal with a gun in hand.
Asad, who has no criminal record, was not named in the FIR lodged immediately after the killing of Umesh Pal. His name surfaced during the investigation, the police have said.
Atiq Ahmed, who has over 100 cases against him over the last 43 years, has been convicted in the same case.
Both Asad and Ghulam had a reward of Rs 5 lakh on their heads.
Umesh Pal, the key witness in the BSP MLA Raju Pal murder case, and his police security guards Raghavendra Singh and Sandeep Nishad, were shot dead outside his home in Prayagraj’s Dhoomanganj on February 24.
With Thursday’s encounter, four people linked to Umesh Pal’s murder have so far been gunned down. Police are still looking for Guddu Muslim, who allegedly lobbed a bomb during the shooting, and another alleged shooter, Sabir. Atiq Ahmed’s wife Shayista is also on the run.
The FIR said Guddu Muslim had also gone to Jhansi immediately after Umesh Pal’s murder and stayed at the house of one Satish Pandey.
According to police sources, Asad Ahmed had fled to Lucknow after the killing of Umesh Pal. He later moved to Kanpur and then Meerut before reaching Delhi, it is learnt. He then decided to flee to Madhya Pradesh. He reached Jhansi and was on his way to the state border on a bike when police intercepted him. Asad was reportedly in disguise.
Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Mayawati’s BSP have both raised questions on the encounter, and demanded an impartial probe. Atiq Ahmed has also repeatedly alleged that he fears being killed in a failed encounter; he recently told media that he was still alive only because of media attention.
