Cornered, controversial MP seeks Cong's help for bail out

Lucknow, Aug 16 (UNI) With the police noose hightening around him, controversial Samajwadi Party MP Atiq Ahmed has sought Congress' help to bail him out of his travails.

Atiq is wanted by the police for his alleged involvement in the murder of BSP MLA Raju Pal. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court had rejected his petition to hand over the probe of the murder case to the CBI.

A few days ago, the Allahabad police had doubled bounty on the absconding MP's head from Rs 2,500 to Rs 5000 his residence.

Sources in the Uttar Pradesh Congress claimed that the MP has approached former Union minister and rebel Samajwadi Party leader Beni Prasad Verma to send feelers to the Congress. Verma shares an excellent rapport with the congress and has unsuccessfully contested the assembly polls from Ayodhya with the help of the Congress.

In the bypoll to the Allahabad (West) seat after the murder of Raju Pal, his wife Puja Pal had unsuccessfully vied against Khalid Azzim alias Ashraf, a brother of Atiq.

But in the recent assembly elections, BSP president Mayawati once again fielded Puja, and she won defeating Ashraf.

Tightening the noose around the Samajwadi Party strongman, police began attaching his properties after he was declared absconder by a court in a case of alleged abduction and intimidation of an eyewitness in the BSP MLA murder case.

As part of the proceedings, which followed an FIR lodged by Umesh Pal, a relative of Raju Pal and also an eyewitness in his murder case, all the immovable properties of Atiq will be attached while movable properties would be seized by police and kept in its custody.

Umesh Pal, in his FIR lodged in the Dhoomanganj police station recently after BSP came to power in Uttar Pradesh, had alleged he was picked up by Atiq and his henchmen last year and tortured and threatened with dire consequences if he refused to give a statement in the court as desired by them.

Recently, Congress had ruffled feathers by fielding a murder convict Vijay Singh for the Farrukhabad bypoll. Singh was convicted for the murder of BJP leader Brahmadutt Dwivedi. He had managed a stay from High Court. He was a SP MLA but decided to join BSP after the elections. However, he was soon expelled from the party for ''having a criminal record.'' The bypoll was necessitated after Vijay Singh resigned from Assembly to join the BSP.

UNI