UP police take Atiq Ahmed to Prayagraj for court appearance

Ahmedabad: A police team from Uttar Pradesh came to the Sabarmati central jail in Ahmedabad on Sunday and took gangster-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed to Prayagraj, where he will be produced before a court on March 28 when it passes an order in a kidnapping case in which he is an accused, officials said. The UP police team reached the Sabarmati jail in the morning and left the premises amid tight security with Ahmed in a police van around 6 pm after completing the necessary formalities, they said.

Ahmed, a former Samajwadi Party MP, has been lodged in the Sabarmati central jail since June 2019. He was shifted there from his home state as per the Supreme Court’s order. “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. He said a team of police was sent to Ahmedabad to bring Ahmed for court appearance.

“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,” the police officer said.

The Court had in April 2019 directed that the former MP from Phulpur 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.