Ateeq Ahmad gets life term: The political merry-go-round he rode before being convicted

Ateeq Ahmad, the former Samajwadi Party leader and mafia don, has been convicted by the Prayagraj MP-MLA court on Tuesday and sentenced to life imprisonment in connection with the 2007 Umesh Pal kidnapping case. Surprisingly, his brother Khalid Azim alias Ashraf and six others were acquitted by the court in the case. 

However, the judgment in the kidnapping case came after 16 years of its registration by the police in 2007 and 17 years after it was executed in 2006. Not only this, justice even came to Umesh Pal, around a month after he was killed in February in a broad daylight shootout in Prayagraj, along with two of the police personnel deployed for his security. The conviction has sparked a political debate in the country. 

Series of events from kidnapping to conviction

The latest conviction of Ateeq Ahmad in the case is connected to a long series of events and crimes that took place or was executed between 2004 to 2023, a span of around 19 years. Let us understand the political merry-go-round he rode from the start before getting the guilty verdict. 

Political rise of Ateeq

Ateeq Ahmad served five terms as Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) in the state of Uttar Pradesh and got elected as a parliamentarian once. His political innings got a kickoff in the year 1989, when he was elected as MLA for the first time. He gave a glance of his strong political hold in the Allahabad West constituency, when he defeated the then MLA Gopal Das Yadav, contesting on the ticket of Congress.

Ateeq Ahmad had won the contest as an independent candidate and since then, he won the assembly polls from the same constituency for five-consecutive times. 

From 1989 to 1996 he served in the constituency as an independent MLA for three terms. Later, he joined Samajwadi Party (SP) and got elected on the party’s ticket in 1996 from the same seat. In 2002, he contested assembly polls as a candidate of Apna Dal and managed to secure a win again from the Allahabad West seat for the fifth term.

Ateeq's Parliament truimph

It was in 2004 when Ateeq Ahmad, a serving MLA in Uttar Pradesh Assembly contested Lok Sabha elections from the Phulpur seat of the state as a Samajwadi Party candidate and managed to win the seat quite comfortably with over 60,000 votes. In 2008, Samajwadi Party expelled him from the party, following his arrest on charges of various heinous crimes, for which he was even declared absconder by the court before getting arrested. 

Since, then he contested many elections remaining lodged in the jail. In the 2009 General Elections, Ateeq Ahmad was allowed to run for election, since he was not convicted in any case, but was denied a ticket under BSP. Later, he joined Apna Dal and contested 2009 elections from the Pratapgarh constituency only to lose the election. He even contested the Lok Sabha by-election held in 2018, as an independent candidate, but only managed to get around 48,000 votes. 

How political rivalry ended with murder

Ateeq Ahmad has been convicted in the kidnapping of Umesh Pal, who was killed on February 24 this year. Ateeq Ahmad has been named in the murder case too, along with his son Asad, his wife and his brother.

Let us understand the series of incidents, based on the information from the police and political sources, which indicates how political rivalry led to the kidnapping of Umesh Pal and later his killing. 

As per reports, Ateeq Ahmad won five-terms as MLA from the Allahabad West constituency between 1989 to 2004. In 2004, he contested Lok Sabha elections from Phulpur seat and won the elections, leaving his assembly seat vacant. A by-election was held on the Allahabad West assembly seat in 2004, in which Ateeq Ahmad’s brother Khalid Azeem alias Ashraf contested on SP ticket.

But, he dramatically lost to Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) candidate Raju Pal with less than 5,000 votes. According to political experts, the by-election in 2004 sparked a big rivalry between BSP leader Raju Pal and Ateeq Ahmad, and is being claimed that the rivalry between the two led to the brutal killing of the BSP MLA in 2005, when he was gunned down by armed men in a broad daylight in Prayagraj. The sensational murder of a serving MLA took the state by storm.

Raju Pal’s wife's political beginning

A by-election was further conducted in 2005, after the murder of the sitting MLA of the constituency. BSP projected Pooja Pal, wife of Raju Pal as its candidate in the by-election, but SP’s Ashraf managed to win the contest. However, during the assembly elections held in 2007, Raju Pal’s wife defeated Ashraf with over 10,000 votes. She continued the winning track in 2012, when she managed to win the second-term in the assembly elections. However, she lost to BJP’s Sidharth Nath Singh in 2017. 

Umesh Pal's standoff against Ateeq

As per reports, after BSP MLA Raju Pal’s murder in January 2005, Umesh Pal, a Zila Panchayat then, claimed himself as an eye-witness to the killing. According to the claims, after he presented himself as prime witness in the BSP MLA’s murder, he started receiving death threats from Ateeq Ahmad and other accused to change the testimony. 

After refusing to change his statement, he was allegedly abducted on February 28, 2006, at gun-point by Ateeq Ahmad and his associates. He was assaulted and forced to change his statement in the murder case, which he again refused to do. 

After getting out of the clutches of his kidnappers, Umesh Pal filed a complaint in 2006 against all the accused including Ateeq Ahmad. But, since the matter pertained to SP’s Parliamentarian Ateeq, no FIR was allegedly registered by the state police, as Samajwadi Party was ruling the state. 

In 2007, after the BSP assumed power in the state, an FIR in the kidnapping of Umesh Pal got registered at the Dhoomanganj police station, in which eleven persons were named accused including Mafia Ateeq Ahmad and trial started. However, Umesh Pal was allegedly killed in February this year, by Ateeq Ahmad's son Asad and his associates in Prayagraj.

Rise in the world of crime

A 60-year-old Mafia turned politician, Ateeq Ahmad, is said to have committed his first murder in 1979. A five-time legislator and a one-time parliamentarian, Ahmad has over 100 criminal cases against him. He has been named in many heinous cases such as murder, abductions, illegal mining, extortion, intimidation and fraud, among others.

The encounter of his rival Shaukat Ilahi in 1989 in Prayagraj let him take over the crime world in the district completely. Incidentally, he made his debut in representative politics in the same year, winning the Allahabad West assembly seat as an independent candidate.

Ateeq is married to Shaista and the couple has five sons including Ali , Umar Ahmad, Asad, Ahzaan and Abaan. Among them his wife Shaista and son Asad are wanted in the Umesh Pal murder case that took place on February 24 this year.