Convoy carrying Atiq Ahmed enters Uttar Pradesh

Lucknow: The police convoy bringing gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed from an Ahmedabad jail to Prayagraj entered Uttar Pradesh on Monday morning, officials said.

Ahmed will be produced before a court on Tuesday when it passes an order in a kidnapping case in which he is an accused.

The police team reached Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad city on Sunday morning and left the premises with Ahmed amid tight security around 6 pm.

After passing through different states, Ahmed's cavalcade entered Uttar Pradesh on Monday morning and stopped at Jhansi police lines.

Officials said it will proceed towards Jalaun and reach Prayagraj via Bundelkhand Expressway in the evening.

The cavalcade is being followed by media teams, Ahmed's sister, and lawyers.

Ahmed's brother, Khalid Azim alias Ashraf, who is lodged in Bareilly jail is also being taken to Prayagraj by a separate police team. He left the jail at about 10 am, officials said.

Ahmed, a former Samajwadi Party MP from Phulpur, was shifted to the Sabarmati central jail in June 2019 following a Supreme Court after he was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and assault on a real estate businessman Mohit Jaiswal while in prison in UP.

He is named in more than 100 criminal cases, including the recent Umesh Pal murder case, police said.

After Umesh Pal, a key witness in the 2005 killing of then BSP MLA Raju Pal, and his two security guards were killed in the brazen shooting on February 24, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had, while speaking in Uttar Pradesh Assembly, vowed to destroy the mafia.

Two of the accused were shot dead in separate encounters by police on February 27 and March 6.

On March 1, Ahmed moved the Supreme Court, claiming there is a genuine and perceptible threat to his and his family members' lives, and referred to the statement made by Adityanath.

He said the Uttar Pradesh Police in all likelihood will seek his transit remand and also police remand to take him from Ahmedabad to Prayagraj and he genuinely apprehends that he may be eliminated during this transit period.

BJP Lok Sabha MP Subrat Pathak had said he would not be surprised if mafia Atiq Ahmed's vehicle overturns like that of gangster Vikas Dubey.

Dubey was gunned down in July 2020 by the Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh police shortly after a police SUV in which he was being brought to Kanpur from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh overturned under mysterious circumstances on a highway. Police claimed that he had tried to flee.

Ahmed had on Sunday expressed apprehensions that he might be killed on the way to UP.

"Mujhe inka programme maloom hai...Hatya karna chahte hain (I know their programme ...they want to murder me)," he said.