A former Indian politician convicted of kidnapping has been shot dead live on TV along with his brother.Atiq Ahmed, who was under police escort, was talking to reporters when a gun was pulled close to his head in Prayagraj, also known as Allahabad.After the shots were fired on Saturday night, three men who had been posing as journalists quickly surrendered and were taken into custody.
Ahmed’s teenage son was shot dead by police days earlier.
Dozens of cases, including kidnapping, murder and extortion, were registered against Atiq Ahmed over the past two decades. A local court sentenced him and two others to life in jail in March this year in a kidnapping case.
Rights activists accuse the police of carrying out extra-judicial killings, which the state’s government denies.The police usually calls them “encounters” – many say these are really staged confrontations which almost invariably end with dead criminals and unscathed police.Encounters carried out by police are – at least in part – a response to India’s grindingly slow and dysfunctional criminal justice system.
