INDIA: Ex-mafia boss turned politician, brother shot dead during interview on live TV

A former Indian mafia boss turned politician, Atiq Ahmed, has been shot dead alongside his brother while giving an interview on live television, after previously claiming there was a threat to his life from the police.

Ahmed who was sentenced to life imprisonment in March for kidnapping was under police escort and was talking to reporters when a gun was pulled close to his head in the city of Prayagraj on Saturday night.

Indian media reported that after the fatal shots were fired, three men who had been posing as journalists quickly surrendered and were taken into custody.

Video footage showed Ahmed and his brother, Ashraf, both in handcuffs, speaking to journalists on the way to a medical check-up at a hospital seconds before they were both shot.

The three suspected assailants had arrived at the site on motorcycles, the police said, adding that a policeman and a journalist were also injured at the scene.

Following the shooting, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, has ordered a judicial probe into the killings and banned large gatherings in the districts of Uttar Pradesh.

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Ahmed, a former Indian MP, and his brother were in police custody and had been brought to Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, where Ahmed was facing murder and assault charges.

He had on him about 100 cases, including kidnapping and murder, during his time as a criminal lord.

A police team from Uttar Pradesh brought Ahmed, who was in the high-security Sabarmati Central Jail in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, to Prayagraj on March 26 to produce him in a court in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case.

On March 28, the court sentenced Ahmed and two others to life imprisonment in the kidnapping case.

They had both been arrested in April in connection with the February murder of Umesh Pal, a key witness in the 2005 murder of Raju Pal, a lawmaker belonging to the regional Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

Ahmed’s teenage son, Asad and another man, wanted in connection with a murder case, were killed by police earlier this week in what was described as a shoot-out.

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