SP leader shot dead at his birthday bash, FIR names Rae Bareli MLA

A 12-year-old boy helping with the lighting at the birthday party was also killed. While initially he was believed to have been caught in the crossfire, sources say the postmortem report indicates he was beaten to death.

Just before he went underground, Akhilesh told The Indian Express over the telephone that he had no hand in last night’s incident and that a CBI probe should be conducted into Ajit’s murder.

‘‘I was not even present at the spot. An aide of Arvind Singh (an Ajit confidant) shot him and they are now dragging my name into the murder,’’ the MLA said.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav warned that the incident would be taken very seriously. ‘‘These are not good signs,’’ said Mulayam when he, along with Amar Singh, Raja Bhaiyya and Akshay Pratap Singh, showed up at Ajit’s residence in Lucknow’s Charbagh Railway Colony where the body had been placed.

Rivals in the contract business, both Akhilesh and Ajit had a history of run-ins with the law. During the Lok Sabha elections earlier this year, Akhilesh was accused of shooting at Sonia Gandhi’s election in-charge in Amawan block of Rae Bareli.

However, there are others who say Ajit’s murder is not the open-and-shut case it is being made out to be. Some talk of Ajit’s running dispute with another prominent MLA over a prime plot in Lucknow. Eyewitnesses who were present at the birthday party last night told The Indian Express that neither Akhilesh nor Kalia was anywhere near the site of the murder at the time.

The controversy does not end there. The FIR has been lodged primarily on the basis of Arvind Singh’s complaint, who told police he had seen Akhilesh, Kalia and two others running away from the spot after the murder.

The interesting part is that till some years ago, Arvind used to be a gunman of Akhilesh. However, Ajit had not only weaned Arvind away from Akhilesh but had also fielded him against the MLA from Rae Bareli. Arvind lost the election and sources believe he may be trying to get back at Akhilesh by trying to implicate him in Ajit’s murder.

Sources are also linking the murder to the fact that Ajit approached IG (Lucknow Zone) Sulkhan Singh a week ago pleading that his security be increased as his political rival Kalia had been released from jail and he feared an attack.

Kalia’s wife had fought on a BJP ticket against Ajit for the MLC elections this January, leading to bad blood between the two. An FIR had even been registered against Ajit’s men for kidnapping a relative of Kalia during the elections. The kidnapped person hasn’t been found yet.

As for Akhilesh, he has had a running battle with the Congress since his expulsion from the party last year, when he formed the Akhil Bharatiya Congress Dal (ABCD).

He had even fielded his nephew, Ashok Kumar Singh, on a SP ticket against Sonia from Rae Bareli during the Lok Sabha elections. A four-time winner from the Cantonment segment of Rae Bareli, Akhilesh had vowed not to allow the Congress to win the seat.

Following the attack on Sonia’s agent, Priyanka Vadra had met the Election Commission to complain against Akhilesh and his supporters’ ‘‘intimidatory tactics’’. It was on the basis of this complaint that the EC had despatched a special observer to the parliamentary constituency.

Ajit also had as many as 17 criminal cases of murder and kidnapping against his name and was booked under the Gangsters’ Act. He started out as a Class IV railway employee, but had graduated first to the railway contract business, then the BJP, and finally the SP. Ajit owned a fleet of numberless black Safaris and travelled around with a 30-member army of private armed securitymen.

Last night, his luck ran out. ‘‘Ajit had turned 39 on August 30 and last night, he threw a party for journalists and SP supporters at Fantasy Hotel. The party was in full swing around 1 am when suddenly Akhilesh Singh, Kalia and two of their accomplices arrived at the scene. Thenn the firing started,’’ Arvind Singh told The Indian Express.

The bullet that is believed to have killed Ajit was fired at his head from behind.

He was rushed to Kanpur’s Regency Hospital but died on the way.

Other eyewitnesses, however, said no one heard the gunshot that killed Ajit, and it was his supporters who started firing randomly when they saw he was dead. Police later recovered more than a dozen bullet shells from the murder spot.