A former Indian MP convicted of kidnapping and dealing with homicide and assault expenses has been shot useless alongside together with his brother in a brazen assault broadcast reside on TV in northern India.

Atiq Ahmed – jailed since 2019 – and his brother Ashraf Ahmed have been being taken handcuffed by police to a hospital in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, when three males focused them from shut vary as they took questions from reporters.

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 … It all happened in seconds.”

The males shortly surrendered to the police after the capturing, with not less than certainly one of them chanting “Jai Shri Ram” or “Hail Lord Ram”, a slogan that has turn out to be a battle cry for Hindu nationalists of their marketing campaign towards Muslims.

Police didn’t say whether or not they have been investigating a doable sectarian motive within the murders of the 2 Muslim males.

The brothers have been deeply concerned in India’s legal underworld – the previous MP was reportedly dealing with greater than 100 totally different circumstances – and press studies mentioned the attackers have been petty criminals.

The pair have been being taken to hospital for medical examinations and have been surrounded by cops on the time.

Local media studies mentioned one of many gunmen was even carrying a tv digital camera and one other a microphone with the emblem of a tv channel.

Several days earlier police in Uttar Pradesh mentioned that they had shot useless Ahmed’s 19-year-old son and his confederate in a shootout. Both have been wished in a homicide case.

Scores of individuals dealing with expenses have been killed within the state lately in comparable so-called “police encounters”, which rights teams say are sometimes extrajudicial executions.

Ahmed, who was jailed in 2019 after he was convicted of kidnapping, had been a neighborhood lawmaker 4 occasions and was additionally elected to India’s parliament in 2004. He final month had claimed in a petition to India’s high court docket that his life was underneath risk from the police.

His lawyer, Vijay Mishra, mentioned the incident was stunning as “it is a clear failure of the police in ensuring the safety” of his purchasers. Opposition events criticised the killings as a safety lapse.

Following his capturing, gatherings of greater than 4 folks have been banned on Sunday throughout the northern state of 200 million folks, which is dominated by the prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata celebration (BJP).

“We don’t want any form of protest to gain momentum,” a police official instructed Reuters.

The state authorities has ordered a judicial investigation into the killings.

The capturing sparked outrage amongst opposition events who accuse the BJP of ruling by concern.

Hundreds of politicians belonging to all events throughout India have legal circumstances pending towards them, with poor Uttar Pradesh a selected hotspot.

These embrace practically half of presidency ministers within the state, together with the state premier, in keeping with the impartial monitoring group the Association for Democratic Reforms.

Agence France-Presse, Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report