Like the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots polarised the state along Hindu-Muslim lines in the run-up to the 2014 LS polls, the Atiq-Ashraf killings threaten to do the sameahead of the big battle in 2024
Police said they found that criminal cases had been registered in the past against two of the three arrested – 22-year-old Lavlesh Tiwari and 23-year-old Sunny Puraney. The background of the third – 18-year-old Arun Kumar Maurya – is being ascertained, police said.
These markers of the spot where gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf were shot dead Saturday night and the short distance between the hospital and its entrance, tell the story of a security lapse that will haunt UP police for a long time.