‘Murderer at 17, brutal mafioso’ with stint in Parliament: Atiq Ahmed, a story of crime & heartland politics

Atiq Ahmed, the gangster who faced a laundry list of criminal cases, was shot dead Saturday, while in police custody. He had seen it coming, and was open about his fear.

Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf right before they were gunned down in Prayagraj, Saturday | ANI

Atiq Ahmed and his clan are in your headlines right now. Atiq Ahmed — the don, gangster and now dead — at one point had up to 250 cases against him under every possible section pertaining to heinous crimes in India until convicted of the kidnapping of Umesh Pal, the man his son Asad allegedly murdered on 24 February. 

Asad, as we know, was killed in a police ‘encounter’ in Jhansi along with his trusted ‘shooter’ Mohammad Ghulam.

Atiq was how a don should be. That’s how a Bahubali should be, as they say, in the Hindi heartland. A brutal mafioso.

Atiq had been in jail for a long time. The last in Sabarmati jail near Ahmedabad. He was brought to Uttar Pradesh for interrogation in his many crimes, in police custody. This was just after the final verdict in the 2007 case for the kidnapping of Umesh Pal. He was convicted and given life sentence.

So, if you think the story is starting out complicated, do read on.

Umesh Pal, abducted in 2006, only filed a case in 2007. Why so, is a story not just of crime but also of heartland politics. 

It’s very cluttered, so complicated that somebody can make a whole OTT serial or movie out of it. Whatever you’ve seen in movies Gangs of Wasseypur, Omkara or in Mirzapur and more plays out here. 

All of that and a lot more politics than you’ve seen in the movies and the shows.

So, once again, for clarity, Atiq Ahmed the gangster/don/Bahubali/strongman had been brought by Uttar Pradesh Police, from Sabarmati jail, last week to Prayagraj for questioning in the Umesh Pal murder case. 

Umesh Pal was killed in a dramatic fashion by his son and fellow ‘shooters’ in full view of CCTV cameras in Prayagraj in February.

He wasn’t killed by Atiq personally, probably because he was in Sabarmati jail. He allegedly had him killed. As I told you, this gets more and more interesting as we go along. 

A story of crime and politics

Where did the story of Atiq Ahmed begin? Now the reason I find it so complicated, and yet so fascinating — and the reason I’m so invested in telling you this story — is because it is about crime, and it is about politics, the two things I have covered all my life as a reporter.

Politics is something I still write about now. But the fact is, that in the Hindi heartland, criminalisation of politics has been a very big story. 

I would say, to some extent, mainstream English media has not covered it adequately, because even when I started researching Atiq Ahmed, I did not find so much said in the mainstream English media. I found some stuff in Hindi, but you had to go back to many, many primary sources.

Now, think of a man, Atiq Ahmed, born in 1962. Which means, in 1979, when he was 17, had just flunked in Class 10 in Allahabad, he allegedly carried out his first ‘hit’. What’s more important, he got away with it neatly and fully. By today’s definition, he’d be juvenile. 

At that age itself he had already allegedly killed somebody or — as they would say in the language of Uttar Pradesh’s tough areas — ‘tapka-oed’ somebody. This made him some kind of a local star, a local hero to people because this was also a locality that was already controlled by an entrenched mafia don — a man popularly known as Chand Baba. His real name was Shauq Ilahi. 

Now, Shauq Ilahi was this big guy, and a 17-year-old rose as a challenger. This is 1979. I will leapfrog 25 years now. 

Be prepared, fasten seatbelts, because we will leapfrog a little bit forwards and backwards repeatedly. Because that is how the story is. 

Within 25 years of 1979, when, at the age of 17, not yet 18, he got his notoriety for an alleged murder and started building his own little mafia challenge to the reigning mafioso Chand Baba — within 25 years — he became Member of Parliament from a constituency called Phulpur, not far from Allahabad.

Phulpur. Does that ring a bell for you? 

Maybe if you’re under 50, it may not mean much for you. But if you’re a little bit older, or if you’ve been reading Indian political history, or if you were at least reading carefully the chapters on Jawaharlal Nehru in your school textbooks, then you would know that Phulpur was the constituency of the Nehru family. 

Jawaharlal Nehru himself got elected from Phulpur in 1952, 1957, 1962 to 1964. In the by-election following his death on 27 May 1964, his sister Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, who was then a governor, resigned, contested and won. 

Janeshwar Mishra, then of Samyukta Socialist Party, won Phulpur subsequently. This seat has been held by V.P. Singh, so two prime ministers have held his seat. Later, it was also held by Kamala Bahuguna.

That said, it is this famous constituency that has given India two prime ministers — three terms to Nehru, one term to Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, one term to V.P. Singh, one term to Hemwati Nandan Bahuguna’s wife. That is the seat that the mafioso of Allahabad or Prayagraj, Atiq Ahmed, won in 2004 on a Samajwadi Party ticket. 

When Mulayam’s SP met Atiq

Let’s take a deep breath as we pick up the thread again. From the jump that Atiq Ahmed made in 25 years.

Meanwhile, in 1989, he contested his first election and there was a context to this. Because he’d been fighting to wrest that space from reigning don Chand Baba (Shauq Ilahi). Now, Chand Baba also had political ambitions.

By this time, Atiq Ahmed had wrested a lot of space from Chand Baba. Going back to 1986, Atiq Ahmed was arrested for the first time when Veer Bahadur Singh was the Congress chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. He went after Atiq and was going to finish him at that point. But it looks like there was intervention from the Congress party at higher levels and Veer Bahadur Singh was asked to release Atiq Ahmed. That’s what happened.

Atiq Ahmed by this time had multiple cases filed against him. He knew the chief minister detested him. He was paranoid about being killed in an encounter or in a rival ‘hit’. He jumped bail deliberately so he would get arrested. 

He went to the safety of jail. He even had the NSA (National Security Act) thrown against him. Yet, in a couple of years, he came out. He came out by the time the 1989 elections were taking place.

Now, see the context of 1989. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement was growing fast. Muslims were very insecure in Uttar Pradesh, so he now decided to ride that sentiment and contest. His rival was Chand Baba, and the Allahabad West constituency was where they were fighting for mafia control. 

Atiq Ahmed swept that election as an Independent. Chand Baba’s sun had set.

Within days — and we were never told who did it — Chand Baba was assassinated. Now, Atiq Ahmed was the master of Allahabad West. Following up, 1991, he won as an Independent, 1993, he won as an Independent. 

By this time, the Samajwadi Party under Mulayam Singh Yadav obviously saw the talent in him, right? 

They were after Muslim votes and Atiq was a good find. This, when the criminalisation of UP politics had begun to peak. By 1996, Mulayam Singh Yadav had admitted Atiq Ahmed to the Samajwadi Party 

In the 1996 assembly elections, in the same constituency, he won on Samajwadi Party backing. That was a time when UP had many assembly elections. So, he had five assembly terms.  

He was elected MLA from the same constituency Allahabad West, in the five elections, in all of 13 years between 1989 and 2002. 

First three, he won as an Independent backed by Mulayam, fourth on Samajwadi Party ticket, fifth on the ticket of a party called Apna Dal. Now, Apna Dal was a party that was set up by Sone Lal Patel, a Kurmi leader. 

His daughter inherited his mantle, and has control of Apna Dal, which is now part of the NDA. This tells you something about the complexity of heartland politics. 

In 1999, Atiq joined Apna Dal. From 1999 to 2003, he was the president of Apna Dal. What was the synergy there? 

Allahabad West constituency, for example, if you look at the general demographics, electoral breakup, 30 per cent Muslims, 15 per cent Kurmi — that is the Apna Dal support base — and 15 per cent of another OBC caste that is the Pals. 

And that’s how his rival became a man called Raju Pal — whose cousin by marriage, this other man Umesh Pal, in the case of whose kidnapping he was convicted and who was allegedly assassinated by his son in Allahabad. 

By 2003-2004, he had figured that he was over with Apna Dal. Also, the political climate and the mood was changing, and Mulayam Singh Yadav was on the rise. He crossed over to Mulayam Singh Yadav. 

Mulayam Singh Yadav had now become chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. If you have trouble with the police, what do you do? You join the side of the chief minister, right? In 2004, Mulayam Singh Yadav fielded him from Phulpur, that is the Nehru family constituency. 

This affirms Mulayam Singh Yadav’s fatal attraction for criminals in politics and that is something that damns his party even now. Akhilesh Yadav, whatever he may have tried to clean this up, and later, say 2015, 2016, 2017, there were lots of fights between Mulayam Singh Yadav and son Akhilesh over these characters.

But the fact that he became MP from Phulpur is something that people of Uttar Pradesh haven’t forgotten. That’s how the identification of Samajwadi Party with criminal gangs has not gone away. 

A rival candidate wins, then is pounded with bullets

Now, he became an MP. To become an MP or to contest for Lok Sabha, he resigned his Vidhan Sabha seat. In his place he fielded his brother from there. His formal name was Khalid Azim, but generally, popularly, he was known as Ashraf. Sounds familiar?

He was also the co-accused in most of the serious cases against Atiq, including the murder of Umesh Pal.

Now, Ashraf was put up as his candidate in Allahabad West, and that is when another local tough from Allahabad West decided to contest. His name was Raju Pal. 

How dare you contest against the don’s brother? Raju Pal himself was no lightweight. He had worked together with some of the gangs in the same area. In fact, there was a formal charge and accusation that he had carried out the assassination of Anis Pehelwan, who was the father of Farhan, who belonged to Atiq Ahmed’s group.

Once again, these are complex connections, but that is how crime is, and right now by mixing high crime with the highest politics. A gang came to assassinate Raju Pal because he had dared to challenge Ashraf, but he survived. Raju Pal had not only dared to challenge Ashraf, he also got elected. I know it will get confusing again and again. 

Ashraf is an alias of Khalid Azim, the brother of Atiq Ahmed, but I will use the more popular name, which is Ashraf, as we go along. 

If you dare to contest against Ashraf and you win that election, you will be taught a lesson. 

The election took place on 4 October, Raju Pal won by 4,000 votes. In November, there was an attempt on his life with multiple rounds of firing and bombing. Several crude bombs were thrown, but he survived. He survived and he must have thought he was lucky.

Then, in December, there was yet another attempt on his life, again with guns and bombs. He again survived, so he must have thought, I’m really lucky. But the third time, he wasn’t lucky. Third time came within weeks of the second attempt.

So, he wins his election in October. The first attempt is in November, the second attempt is in December. Third was on 25 January 2005. This was successful. First of all, a lot of bullets were fired at him and bombs were thrown at him and people accompanying him. His people put him on the back of a tempo and they were driving the tempo to a hospital but the assassins chased them. They caught up with it. Isn’t it like a scene out of Gangs of Wasseypur, Mirzapur, Omkara, anything you might have seen? 

They stopped the tempo and, again, poured bullets into Raju Pal on his way to the hospital. He was dead, and 19 bullets were found in his body. Now, if you think the story is over, no, it isn’t.

Just after his election, and nine days before he was assassinated, Raju Pal had got married to Pooja Pal. She was widowed within nine days of getting married. 

She contested in the byelection on a BSP ticket. She still had the mehndi (henna) on her palms. In her campaign, she’d hold up her palms and say, “This is my bridal mehendi, I was widowed when I just got married”, and she’d cry. In spite of all that, such was the power of the dons that she lost.

Can you imagine there was a time then in UP when the don, the main don, the big don of Allahabad, was himself “Mananiya Sansad” or “Honourable Member of Parliament”, and his brother was “Mananiya Vidhayak, Honourable member of the state assembly”. 

That’s how it was at the peak of their power. 

Their decline started with Mulayam Singh’s. By 2007, UP was reeling under waves of crime and a mood had built up that Samajwadi Party was so mixed up with mafia that there were kidnappings for ransom, kidnappings for killings, kidnappings also for political ransom. People were fed up.

The 2007 election, Mayawati won with a majority. Pooja Pal was her candidate and she won the Allahabad West election. She defeated Ashraf.

This blood feud continued. In 2012, Pooja Pal won again. This time, Atiq Ahmed himself contested from jail.

But this is Uttar Pradesh, the land of no political surprises. By 2022, Pooja Pal had joined Samajwadi Party, whose candidate and whose favourite Atiq Ahmed had allegedly got her husband assassinated. That trial, 20 years since, was still on when Atiq and Ashraf were killed.

In fact, Umesh Pal was a prosecution witness in that trial. And it was in the course of the trial that it looked like Umesh Pal had turned hostile. So the prosecution had given him up. And yet again, in these complicated situations, Umesh Pal again must have got into some trouble with Atiq Ahmed after having done a favour to him by reneging on his own evidence over Raju Pal’s murder that there was an attempt to kidnap him in 2006. 

And you know what happened? While there was an attempt to kidnap him in 2006, he did not file a case then. Why? Because Mulayam Singh Yadav was still in power.

He filed a case in 2007, after Mulayam Singh Yadav had lost and Mayawati had come in. And remember, his cousin Pooja Pal was in Mayawati’s party.

Complex heartland equations

This is as fascinatingly complex as that. By 2022, however, this cluttered wheel of crime and politics in Uttar Pradesh had turned fully and Pooja Pal, now after having been with BSP for such a long time, and fighting the SP, its favourite Atiq Ahmed and his family, joined Samajwadi Party. 

Pooja Pal now won on Samajwadi Party ticket in the 2022 election from the assembly constituency called Chail in Kaushambi district, not far from Allahabad. She defeated the joint BJP-Apna Dal candidate.

Again you want to see how cluttered this is. At this point, Atiq Ahmed’s wife Shaista Parveen, who also has some cases against her, including the case for being an alleged co-conspirator in the assassination of Umesh Pal, is a member of the BSP.

Think about this. Apna Dal, cofounded by Atiq, is now a constituent of the ruling NDA, and the woman whose husband he, Atiq, had allegedly assassinated, is an MLA of the Samajwadi Party. That is a little primer in Hindi Heartland politics and the mix of crime and politics there.

Now, back to Atiq. He was expelled from Samajwadi party. In the next Parliament election, 2009, he contested again, this time not from Phulpur, but from Pratapgarh, again not far away in the same part of UP. 

Then, again, he contested on the ticket of Apna Dal. In 2016, Mulayam Singh Yadav, in spite of all this, in spite of such a colourful past, again brought him back into the Samajwadi Party.

And that is something that Akhilesh Yadav then opposed, he opposed but he wasn’t able to do very much. Atiq was given the ticket of Kanpur Cantt, was going to campaign there and famously he took out a procession of 500 vehicles there so the big don signaled his arrival.

But it so happened, at around the same time, some videos appeared and these were the videos of Atiq Ahmed and some of his men. Again, you’ve seen these things in say Mirzapur or Wasseypur one of those things or Omkara, Atiq Ahmed and his people were seeing thrashing faculty members of the premier institute in Prayagraj, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences — in short, called SHUATS. As this came out, courts got into action and ordered the superintendent of police to arrest Atiq Ahmed. Akhilesh used that excuse to fire Atiq Ahmed finally from his party.

In fact, by this time, the fight between or the tussle between Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav had risen to its peak because Mulayam wanted old loyalists back and Akhilesh was trying to fight the slur that his party was mixed up with criminal mafias. 

If you see this clinically and dispassionately, you can see that the peak that Atiq Ahmed attained was in 2004, when he became an MP from Phulpur. Since then, it’s been a decline, and the decline got exacerbated, or it became steeper as Mayawati took power and Mulayam lost power, and later when Akhilesh got power, Mulayam Singh tried his best to rehabilitate him but failed.

In the 2012 assembly election, he decided to fight from jail and he asked for bail to be able to campaign against Pooja Pal. 

Ten judges of the Allahabad High Court declined to hear that case. Now, judges can always recuse themselves, but 10 judges? The 11th judge who heard the case gave him bail. So, he came out, he campaigned, but Pooja Pal still defeated him, so you can say that his star has been coming down since then, despite Mulayam Singh Yadav’s best efforts. 

Yogi Aditynath’s first term changed the equation.

It was on 26 December 2018 that a man called Mohit Jaiswal, a businessman, complained that he had been kidnapped from Lucknow, taken to Deoria jail, far in eastern UP, where Atiq Ahmed was imprisoned. And he was then thrashed by Atiq Ahmed, his people. And in that thrashing, some members of the jail staff also joined in. You’ve seen that in one of those crime serials or a movie like Omkara or Wasseypur, haven’t you? 

That a gangster runs his court in a jail. Has his henchmen call somebody, makes a demand. The person says no, they thrash him, and the jail staff also joins in. 

So, he came in and made a complaint, after which the Supreme Court got involved and asked for him to be moved to another jail. He was first moved to Bareilly. Bareilly said he’s too dangerous and too difficult. He was moved to Naini jail in Allahabad. And finally, to Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad.

You could see fear in his eyes when he was being brought from Sabarmati jail. He said, “Mujhe inka programme malum hai. Court ke kandhe se goli marna chahte hain (I know their intention. They want to hide behind the court and kill me).” 

One thing you could say for him is that he had a premonition or foresight. He had seen his death coming and also the manner in which it came.