Why is it that, even after 183 police encounters in 6 years, Yogi Adityanath’s UP is still treading on the same path?
How should the professional fraternity react to the assassination of gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf – in the presence of police – when Yogi’s ‘tough stand’ politics seems to be getting more popular by the minute? The killing, after all, compliments his anti-mafia boasting.
What’s signified here is the unflinching will of the state’s Executive wing to showcase exemplary retaliation against individual mafia through its encounter-oriented law and order machinery and its admitted inability to provide suitable and effective legal protocols for enforcing the rule of law. There will be many more related issues, such as cancerous judicial delays and selective political patronage of gangsters.
Time to seriously introspect?
This raging bull of lawlessness needs to be caught by the horn. But judging by the debate around this issue, the goal can’t be achieved anytime soon.
The FIR in the alleged custodial murder of the mafia brothers of Prayagraj, Atiq and Ashraf, has recorded that the three young assailants were seeking notoriety to gain mafia status for themselves—nothing unusual in the crime world. UP has seen this trend time and again. Atiq himself, for one, had killed his own mentor, Chand Baba, to capture attention.
Gangster Munna Bajrangi was also executed in an allegedly arranged jail shootout under the Yogi government in 2018. Gang lords are eliminated regularly in UP, but it only cements the ‘long-live’ mafia tradition.
A sure sign of why Yogi’s police is most ill-fitted to crack this tradition was seen in the flat-footed reaction of the well-armed police officers escorting Atiq and Ashraf during the fatal attack. The semi-automatic guns used in the attack are no longer a rarity, indicating a booming crime culture in the region—with or without Yogi.
The aspiring mafia also sought identity with power politics through the ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan they raised after murdering the brothers, popularly associated with the party in power. That, more than anything else, underlined that the mafia would stay and flourish as long as they complemented politicians.
By denying Atiq’s plea for protection after the killing of his son Asad, the Supreme Court showed stereotypical aloofness, ignoring that it was not just the individual’s security but the rule of law under threat. The harsh reality is that it is hard for constitutional courts or human rights commissions to monitor a state that supports its favourite gangsters and competes with the discarded ones.
Public support for mafia slaying is not surprising, as it is considered a cathartic response. No police officer would be expected to mourn mafia deaths either. But celebrating lawlessness is another dimension altogether, and UP seems to be falling into that abyss.
Vikash Narain Rai is a former IPS officer. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)