What secret is BJP govt hiding with encounter: Akhilesh Yadav

Lucknow: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday attacked the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, alleging that the deceased in the "Allahabad murder case" was a member of the ruling party and the one whose name has cropped up is its minister.

"When will those BJP workers, who are destroying the image of party, be reduced to dust or removed from ministerial posts," Yadav asked in a tweet in Hindi.

"The deceased in the Allahabad murder case was a member of the BJP and the one whose name is coming up in the context of money is also a BJP minister. After all, what secret is the government hiding by doing the encounter," he asked.

The man who fired the first shot at Umesh Pal, a key witness in the killing of former BSP legislator Raju Pal in 2005, was gunned down in an encounter with Prayagraj police on Monday. Vijay Chaudhary, alias Usman, suffered bullet injuries in his neck, chest and thigh during an encounter, police have said.

Usman's wife Suhani has, however, accused police of killing him in a fake encounter after picking him up earlier in the day.

Police said aides of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed, the main accused in the 2005 murder case who is lodged in a Gujarat prison, gave Vijay Chaudhary his second name "Usman".

His brother Rakesh Chaudhary is lodged in the Naini Central Jail and a dozen cases, including that of murder, have been registered against him.

Meanwhile, at a press conference in Prayagraj on Monday, Atiq Ahmed's sister Ayesha Noori accused Prayagraj Mayor Abhilasha Gupta Nandi of conspiring to kill Umesh Pal to embroil Shaista Parveen in the case, so that she could not contest the next mayoral election after the BSP declared her as its candidate.

Noori also accused Nand Gopal Gupta Nandi, a minister in the state government, of not returning Rs 5 crore taken from Atiq Ahmed.

Reacting to the allegations levelled on him, 'Nandi' in a tweet in Hindi on Monday had said, "There is rule of law in Uttar Pradesh under the leadership of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath-ji! The Adityanath government is working on a zero-tolerance policy towards criminals and the mafia. Even in the Umesh Pal murder case, the action initiated is moving in this direction." 

"The baseless allegations are only an unsuccessful attempt to divert attention from the main issue and mislead....Linking this with the mayoral elections is not only irrelevant but also laughable," he had said in another tweet.

Umesh Pal was killed on February 24.