NYT WORLD: Killing on Live TV Renews Alarm About India’s Slide Toward Extrajudicial Violence
By Mujib Mashal, Hari Kumar and Sameer Yasir
Section: World
Source: New York Times
Published Date: April 16, 2023 at 03:00AM
The victim was a former politician, a notorious criminal and a Muslim. Afterward, two government officials described the killing as akin to divine justice.
When the police in India’s largest state put a notorious mobster-politician’s associates in their sights, they unleashed a take-no-prisoners campaign that at times mirrored the brutality of their underworld targets, who had been implicated in a brazen murder.
In three separate raids, officers in the state of Uttar Pradesh shot dead four of those associates, including the mobster-politician’s son. The deadly “encounters,” as such apparent extrajudicial killings are called in India, won praise from the state’s leader, Yogi Adityanath, a hard-line Hindu monk who is seen as a potential prime minister.
Members of Mr. Adityanath’s Hindu nationalist governing party and loyal broadcast media outlets echoed the praise, but also posed a prodding question: Why had the mobster-politician himself, Atiq Ahmed, who was already serving a life sentence and had 100 other cases pending against him, been spared a similarly abrupt and bloody end?
That came on Saturday night.
By Mujib Mashal, Hari Kumar and Sameer Yasir
Section: World
Source: New York Times
Published Date: April 16, 2023 at 03:00AM
The victim was a former politician, a notorious criminal and a Muslim. Afterward, two government officials described the killing as akin to divine justice.
When the police in India’s largest state put a notorious mobster-politician’s associates in their sights, they unleashed a take-no-prisoners campaign that at times mirrored the brutality of their underworld targets, who had been implicated in a brazen murder.
In three separate raids, officers in the state of Uttar Pradesh shot dead four of those associates, including the mobster-politician’s son. The deadly “encounters,” as such apparent extrajudicial killings are called in India, won praise from the state’s leader, Yogi Adityanath, a hard-line Hindu monk who is seen as a potential prime minister.
Members of Mr. Adityanath’s Hindu nationalist governing party and loyal broadcast media outlets echoed the praise, but also posed a prodding question: Why had the mobster-politician himself, Atiq Ahmed, who was already serving a life sentence and had 100 other cases pending against him, been spared a similarly abrupt and bloody end?
That came on Saturday night.
Read More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/16/world/asia/atiq-ahmed-shot-india.html
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