An official vehicle in the convoy escorting gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed hit a cow in Madhya Pradesh's Shivpuri district on Monday before it entered Jhansi, a police official said.
A video of the incident which occurred at around 6:25 AM shows a cow darting towards the road when it was hit by the vehicle carrying Ahmed. The cow fell near the road divider. After the incident, the vehicle stopped for a while before resuming the onward journey. A police official confirmed this incident.
According to eyewitnesses, the cow got up after a while and went away. Tendua police station in-charge Manish Kumar Jadoun said Atiq Ahmed was travelling in the vehicle that hit the cow. Later, the convoy halted briefly at Kharai in Shivpuri district at around 7 AM to allow Ahmed to attend nature's call before crossing into Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh.
When Ahmed, wearing a white turban, got down from the police van, reporters asked him whether he was "afraid", to which he replied by saying "kahe ka dar" (what fear) before police personnel whisked him away. Notably, after stepping out of Sabarmati central jail in Ahmedabad on Sunday evening, Ahmed expressed fear that he might be murdered. "Hatya, hatya (murder, murder)," Ahmed had told reporters outside the prison while being whisked away in a police vehicle by security personnel.
Earlier, the carcade carrying Ahmed, which started from Ahmedabad on Sunday evening, entered Madhya Pradesh from the Rajasthan border in the morning, a police official said. "It halted briefly at Kharai in Shivpuri district to allow Ahmed to attend nature's call. The convoy left Shivpuri district after a brief halt and entered Jhansi district of UP at around 9 AM," the Shivpuri police official said.
The gangster is being taken to Prayagraj from Sabarmati central jail by the Uttar Pradesh police for a court case. Ahmed, a former Samajwadi Party MP, has been lodged in the Sabarmati central jail since June 2019. He was shifted there following a Supreme Court after he was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping and assault on real estate businessman Mohit Jaiswal while in prison in UP.
Atiq is named in more than 100 criminal cases, including the recent Umesh Pal murder case, police had said. BJP Lok Sabha MP Subrat Pathak had said he would not be surprised if mafia Atiq Ahmed's vehicle overturns like that of gangster Vikas Dubey.
Dubey was gunned down in July 2020 by the Special Task Force of Uttar Pradesh police shortly after a police SUV in which he was being brought to Kanpur from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh overturned under mysterious circumstances on a highway. Police claimed that he had tried to flee.
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