LUCKNOW, India — A former Indian lawmaker convicted of kidnapping and going through homicide and assault costs was shot useless alongside together with his brother in a dramatic assault that was caught dwell on TV in northern India, officers mentioned Sunday.

Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf have been beneath police escort on their solution to a medical checkup at a hospital on Saturday night time when three males posing as journalists focused the 2 brothers from shut vary in Prayagraj metropolis in Uttar Pradesh state.

The males rapidly surrendered to the police after the capturing, with at the very least certainly one of them chanting “Jai Shri Ram,” or “Hail Lord Ram,” a slogan that has develop into a battle cry for Hindu nationalists of their marketing campaign in opposition to Muslims.

Uttar Pradesh is ruled by India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party.

Police officer Ramit Sharma mentioned the three assailants got here on bikes posing as journalists.

“They managed to reach close to Atiq and his brother on the pretext of recording a byte and fired at them from close range. Both sustained bullet injuries on the head,” he mentioned. “It all happened in seconds.”

Multiple movies of Saturday’s capturing went viral on social media. It was initially broadcast dwell on native TV channels because the brothers spoke to media whereas being taken to the hospital.

The footage exhibits somebody pulling a gun near Atiq Ahmad’s head. As he collapses, his brother can be shot. The video exhibits assailants repeatedly firing on the two males after each fell on the bottom.

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Atiq Ahmad, 60, was jailed in 2019 after he was convicted of kidnapping a lawyer, Umesh Pal, who had testified in opposition to him as as a witness within the killing of a lawmaker in 2005. In February, Pal was additionally killed.

On Thursday, Atiq Ahmad’s teenage son and one other man, each of whom have been blamed for Pal’s loss of life, have been killed by police in what was described as a shootout.

Two weeks earlier, Atiq Ahmad had petitioned the Indian Supreme Court for defense, saying there was an “open, direct and immediate threat to his life” from state functionaries of Uttar Pradesh, based on media stories. But the courtroom declined to intervene and as an alternative requested his lawyer to method the native state courtroom.

Atiq Ahmad was a state lawmaker 4 occasions and was additionally elected to India’s Parliament in 2004 from Uttar Pradesh’s Phulpur constituency, as soon as represented by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

He confronted greater than 100 felony circumstances and was among the many first politicians from Uttar Pradesh to be prosecuted beneath the stringent Gangster Act within the late Nineteen Eighties. He additionally cultivated a Robin Hood picture amongst principally Muslim constituents and used to financially assist many poor households.

But he was additionally criticized for leveraging his political clout to develop a syndicate that was an lively participant in the true property market amid allegations of compelled seize of properties and different crimes.

Opposition events criticized the killings as a safety lapse.