Ajay Gudavarthy writes: One may not want to dismiss the popular mood of support for extra-judicial violence but that cannot be an excuse to accept the dominant narrative. Any analysis of the use of encounters must raise questions about their effectiveness.
Those accused of killing Umesh Pal had hatched the plan to murder him in a meeting inside Bareilly jail on February 11 this year, the day that gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly kidnapping Mr Pal.
The police tried to catch murder accused Asad Ahmed and Ghulam, gunned down in Jhansi on Thursday by the Uttar Pradesh police, alive, they said in the First Information Report (FIR) filed soon after the encounter.
Atiq Ahmed on Wednesday confessed to plotting the killing of Umesh Pal, the key witness in a 2005 high-profile murder case, according to his remand copy. The document also reveals the role of Ato's wife Sahista Parveen in the killing. The killing of the two policemen accompanying Umesh Pal was also pre-planned, going by the remand note.
Asad Ahmad, son of infamous gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmad, was killed in an encounter with the Uttar Pradesh police. The authorities had received intelligence reports of a possible attack on a police convoy in Jhansi to free Ahmad's father., India News, Times Now