Four days after don Atiq Ahmed was moved there, Bareilly jail wants him out

Atiq Ahmed | By special arrangement

The Bareilly jail administration says gangster Atiq Ahmed, who was moved from Deoria jail just four days ago, will vitiate the atmosphere.

Lucknow: Less than four days after gangster Atiq Ahmed was moved from Deoria jail to the Bareilly district prison, the Bareilly district administration has written to the Uttar Pradesh government requesting that Ahmed be moved to another prison.

Lack of personnel, the isolated location of the Bareilly prison as well as the threat that 56-year-old Ahmed will vitiate the jail atmosphere are some of the reasons behind the request, the district magistrate said.

“A report was submitted by the jail authorities where such a request was made. I have recommended the same to the principal secretary of the home department and an email regarding the same was sent yesterday evening,” DM Virendra Kumar Singh told ThePrint, maintaining that the request for the transfer was made following a report submitted by the Bareilly jail superintendent.

The report states that the prison is located far away from the city and the nearest police station is also 5 km away. The jail superintendent said that the possibility of the jail atmosphere being vitiated with the presence of an inmate liked Ahmed was high and that there were not enough personnel deployed in the prison to handle the situation.

Ahmed has been accused in more than 100 cases relating to murder, extortion, land-grabbing, intimidation and the UP Gangsters’s Act, among others. These include the 2005 murder case of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Raju Pal. Ahmed was charged with intimidating a witness in the case.

In 1995, Ahmed had also been allegedly involved in an attack on BSP chief and former UP chief minister Mayawati at a guest house.

The shift to Bareilly prison

In February 2017, Ahmed was booked for allegedly assaulting employees of Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences in Allahabad (now Prayagraj) after they had taken action against those caught cheating in an examination. Ahmed had then surrendered at Naini police station and sent to Naini prison in Allahabad. After the BJP came to power in the state, Ahmed was shifted to Deoria jail in April 2017.

On 31 December 2018, the government had ordered that Ahmed be shifted from Deoria prison to Bareilly prison. The order came after a Lucknow-based real estate businessman was abducted from the Gomti Nagar area, allegedly by Ahmed’s associates.

The businessman, Pankaj Jaiswal, was picked up in his own SUV which was driven nearly 300 km to Deoria jail. He was brought to the Ahmed’s barracks where he was allegedly assaulted by Ahmed and his son Umar. Jaiswal also alleged that he was forced to sign documents transferring property worth Rs 48 crore to Ahmed’s associates.

Similar request in the past

This is not the first time such a request has been made by officers of a prison where Ahmed has been lodged.

In July last year, the Deoria district administration had written to the government with a similar plea. During an inspection of the prison, mobile phone SIM cards, knives and pen drives had been recovered from the prison, most of which had been found in Ahmed’s barracks.

“With high-profile criminals like Atiq Ahmed, the threat of security in prison increases manifold. The Bareilly jail is located around half an hour from the main city and situated between fields,” a senior police officer said.

“With a strongman like Ahmed in prison there, it is likely that his associates would get themselves arrested in petty crime cases so that they can be lodged in the same prison. Moreover, other associates tend to take up accommodation near the prison in order to continue their criminal activities,” the officer added.