Atiq Ahmad brought back to Gujarat's Sabarmati Jail from Prayagraj

Gangster-politician Atiq Ahmad was brought back to the Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad amid tight security on Wednesday evening, a day after a court at Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh sentenced him to life imprisonment in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case. Ahmad, a former Uttar Pradesh MLA and Lok Sabha MP, was brought back to the high-security jail in Gujarat in a UP police van after a nearly 24-hour-long road journey from Prayagraj, an official said.

Video clips showed the UP police van ferrying the 60-year-old gangster-politician entering the jail premises. The UP police had on Sunday taken Ahmad's custody from the Sabarmati Jail so that he could be taken to Prayagraj, his hometown, for production before a special MP-MLA court that conducted trial in the kidnapping case.

The special court on Tuesday held the former Lok Sabha MP and two others guilty in the 17-year-old criminal case and sentenced them to life imprisonment. They were pronounced guilty under Indian Penal Code section 364-A (kidnapping or abduction in order to murder). Ahmad has been lodged in the Sabarmati Jail since June 2019 after the Supreme Court in April that year directed that the former MP from Phulpur in UP be shifted to a high-security facility in Gujarat after he was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and assault on a real estate businessman, Mohit Jaiswal, while lodged in a prison in the northern state.


The former Samajwadi Party legislator is named in more than 100 criminal cases, and recently he was listed as an accused in the killing of Umesh Pal, a key witness in the 2006 BSP MLA Raju Pal murder case. Umesh Pal was gunned down last month in Prayagraj.