Atiq Ahmed killing | Walking 7 steps to their death: no access control, no media ID checks

Despite the hospital compound having enough parking space, the police vehicles, it is learnt,  stopped right outside the gate. The handcuffed Atiq and Ashraf were taken out and paraded inside. Mediapersons, aware of Atiq and Ashraf being taken to the hospital — some were chasing police cars from the police station itself — tried to get their soundbite at the entrance. They did not oblige.

A photo of three men; (L-R) Arun Maurya, Sunny Purane and Lavlesh Tiwari, who opened fire at gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf while they were being taken for a medical checkup in Prayagraj. (PTI Photo)

Two steps inside, they were again accosted by media mikes. After a pause, they moved forward, nudged by policemen. Five steps later, reporters encircled them and began asking questions. Seconds into answering a question as to why he did not go for his son Asad’s burial, a shooter, now identified as Lavlesh Tiwari hailing from Banda, fired multiple rounds into his head and then his torso. Before Ashraf could understand what was happening, he too was shot in the head by Lavlesh and accomplices now identified as Sunny Puraney from Hamirpur and Arun Maurya from Kasganj.

Eyewitnesses said that as journalists and bystanders and they ran helter-skelter, the shooters kept firing bullets. The shooters, said eyewitnesses, threw their guns away and chanted slogans of Jai Shri Ram, raising their hands for surrender.

“The entire episode was over in less than a minute. The shooters were apprehended by the police immediately, and Atiq and Ashraf were declared dead minutes later,” said a TV journalist who was injured running away.

Explaining the late-night visit for a medical checkup, a police officer said that Atiq was “heavily diabetic and suffered from hypertension.”  Atiq and Ashraf, sources said, were taken to Colvin hospital for a medical check-up on Friday evening as well. “On Saturday morning, after he complained of some unease, we even got a doctor to visit him in the lock-up,” the officer said.

Doctors at the hospital said medical checkups of the accused are done only after written orders are received, as mandated by the court. Sources within UP police said it is not always necessary to take the accused to the hospital and in sensitive cases, doctors are made to visit the lock-up itself with required equipment.

An official said, in many cases, accused are taken to the hospital secretly so that no one comes to know about the movement of the accused. Some officials cited the case of 26/11 accused Ajmal Kasab, whose movements to JJ hospital from Mumbai crime branch, were never known to the media.

It is possible these visits to the hospital were monitored by the assailants who had come well prepared with a camera, a fake mike and fake identity cards posing as media persons.

Former UP DGP Vikram Singh, considered a veteran of law and order management, said while the security at the Dhumalganj police station appeared fool-proof, there were tell-tale signs of lapses, when Atiq was taken to the hospital.

“Lapse number one, is that the accused should never have been allowed to meet the press. There was no access control at the hospital. If those fake reporters came with fake IDs and cameras, it was the job of the police to identify them. If you allow a free-for-all, such incidents happen. When anyone dies in police custody, it means the police have let the rule of law down,” Singh told The Indian Express. Singh also said that the manner in which the assailant surrendered and the circumstances of the attack show that “there is much more than meets the eye”.

“The assailants are of poor background. But they were using guns of Turkish pedigree each costing Rs 7 lakh, each round costing Rs 250. Their firing shows they had a lot of practice…I hope the police will get to the bottom of it,” Singh said.