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A team of the Uttar Pradesh police reached Sabarmati central jail in Gujarat's Ahmedabad on Sunday to take gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed to Prayagraj, where he will be produced before a court that is scheduled to pass an order on March 28 in a kidnapping case in which he is an accused, officials said.
According to a report by NDTV, Ahmed will seek sentencing by video conference in the kidnapping case, as he fears he will be killed -- either by a staged accident or an encounter -- while being taken to a court in Uttar Pradesh, sources have said.
"A team of police from Prayagraj is at the Sabarmati jail to take Atiq Ahmed to their state, where he will be produced in a court. Formalities for the same are underway," Superintendent of Police (Sabarmati jail) J S Chavda said.
A court in Prayagraj has set March 28 as the date to pass its order in a kidnapping case in which Ahmed is an accused, Prayagraj Police Commissioner Ramit Sharma said in the Uttar Pradesh city.
Sharma said that a team of the Prayagraj police was sent to bring Ahmed and produce him to the court there on the given date.
"As part of the procedure, all the accused are to be produced before the court on the date of the judgment and then sent back to their respective jails. A team of police has been sent to Sabarmati jail for mafia Atiq Ahmed as he has to be produced in the court on the given date," the police officer said.
Atiq has been lodged in Sabarmati jail since June 2019 after the Supreme Court had in April that year directed that the former MP from Phulpur in UP be shifted to a high-security jail in Gujarat after he was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and assault of a real estate businessman Mohit Jaiswal while in jail. He is named in more than 100 criminal cases, including the recent Umesh Pal murder case, police said.
Among the most sensational murders in which Ahmed is allegedly involved was that of Raju Pal, the MLA from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) who was shot dead in 2005. Umesh Pal, a key witness in this murder case, was gunned down outside his residence in Prayagraj on February 24 this year.
Ahmed had early this month moved the Supreme Court for protection, claiming that he and his family have been falsely implicated as accused in the Umesh Pal murder case in Prayagraj and he may be killed in a fake encounter by the Uttar Pradesh Police.
In his plea, Ahmed said the Uttar Pradesh police were in all likelihood seeking his transit remand and police remand to take him from Ahmedabad to Prayagraj and he "genuinely apprehends that he may be eliminated during this transit period".
(With inputs from PTI)
