Atiq Ahmed was an MP but also had around 100 criminal cases against him.
Atiq Ahmed was born in a Muslim-dominated neighbourhood in Prayagraj in 1962.
By 1989, Ahmed was eyeing a career in politics. The mentor and his follower fell out when they both stood against each other in elections to the state assembly that year. In 2018, a businessman named Mohit Jaiswal made a police complaint alleging that he had been abducted from Lucknow and taken to the Deoria prison, where Ahmed was being held. Jaiswal told journalists that he was brutally beaten by the gangster, his henchmen, and even the prison staff.
Ahmed's influence extended beyond Prayagraj. In one incident, he led an armed gang to try and seize an empty plot of land owned by a businessman in an upscale neighbourhood in the state capital of Lucknow, some 200km away. Ahmed arrives in parliament from a jail in Prayagraj to attend a special session of parliament in July 2008
"Judging by the lengthy list of criminal cases in which he stood accused, Ahmed was equally proficient in running a criminal enterprise as he was conducting constituency service," wrote Milan Vaishnav in his book When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics."Locals marvelled at this weekly durbar, where Ahmed, one ear pressed to his mobile phone and other taking in requests for constituency service, would mutter orders to his personal assistant or stenographer".
As a leader of the Samajwadi Party, Ahmed did not hesitate to use violent tactics. He was allegedly involved in the infamous 1995 "guest house attack" on Mayawati, the Dalit leader of the regional Bahujan Samaj Party, who was then running a fraying coalition government with the rival Samajwadi Party. Ahmed was allegedly part of a group which stormed into a guest house where Mayawati was holding a meeting - to discuss whether to pull out of the government - and assaulted her.
Ahmed presented himself as a sacrificial figure in politics, claiming he had little personal life because he was working for the people. "He gave money to the poor to settle their medical bills, send their children to school. He helped Hindus and Muslims alike. But there was nothing charitable about it. It was all about cultivating an image like other gangster-politicians do," says Anupam Mishra, editor of The Leader, a prominent Prayagraj newspaper.
On a balmy February evening, Umesh Pal was shot dead outside his home by gunmen suspected to be part of Ahmed's gang.
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