Ateeq Ahmed case: CBI team speaks to Deoria jail officials

New Delhi: A CBI team on Friday visited Deoria Jail in Uttar Pradesh to speak to jail officials in connection with the agency's case against former Samajwadi Party MP Ateeq Ahmed, sources here said.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had earlier registered a case against Ahmed on charges of extortion, cheating, and forgery.

The FIR alleges that Ahmed's goons had, after continuously intimidating a businessman named Mohit Jaiswal, kidnapped him and brought him to Deoria Jail, where Ahmed himself was lodged.

The complaint further goes on to say that Jaiswal was beaten up by Ahmed's associates in jail and then forced to sign away ownership of four of his companies to Ahmed's associates.

Earlier, sources familiar with developments had said that four firms, namely MJ Infra Housing, MJ Infra Green, MJ Infra Land, and MJ Infra State were transferred to Ahmed's associates forcefully inside the jail premises.

Sources in the know told Millennium Post that the CBI team as part of its investigation into the case, had visited the UP jail in order to speak to jail officials as part of their basic enquiry as to how Jaiswal was brought in the jail and extorted without any interference from them. Further, they said that relevant documents have been collected from the UP Police and are being scrutinised.

The case was entrusted to the CBI after the UP government had approached the Supreme Court of India, saying that CCTV cameras at the jail complex were tampered with at the time of the incident.

Initially, the UP police had registered an FIR in 2018, and in the complaint, the incident is said to have occurred on December 26, last year.

Ahmed was a Samajwadi Party (SP) member in the 14th Lok Sabha from Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh from 2004 to 2009. Jaiswal, who has a real estate business in the posh Gomti Nagar area in Lucknow, had alleged that Ahmad was threatening him for extortion for the last two years.