Uttar Pradesh

All district officials in the state have been directed to ensure that religious programmes should be held indoors, and no person should be allowed to block roads. Principal Secretary (Home) Sanjay Prasad and Special Director General of Police (SDGP) Prashant Kumar have issued directives in this regard to all field officers such as ADGs, Inspector Generals (IG), Deputy IGs, district police chiefs, Divisional Commissioners and District Magistrates (DMs) during a virtual review meeting, said an official note.

The uttar pradesh Chief minister Yogi Adityanath said: "Before 2017, the state was infamous for riots. More than 700 riots rocked the state between 2012 and 2017. But not a single riot broke out after 2017. Earlier, just the names of many districts scared people. Now there is no need to be scared.

The post-mortem will be done by a panel of doctors and the entire process will be video-graphed. The burial of the two bodies will take place in the Kasari Masari graveyard amid heavy police security, with only a few distant relatives and locals allowed inside the ground.

The two did not plan to attack the convoy and free Atiq Ahmad - as is being claimed by a section of media-- but to embarrass the UP government, create a sensation and prevent Atiq's frequent trips to UP. Asad, sources said, wanted questions to be raised on Atiq's security so that his transfer from Sabarmati jail in Gujarat to UP would be halted.

Akhilesh said that the ruling party was trying to divert the attention of the people from the real issues plaguing the state. He said the BJP government did not believe in the judiciary and was taking the law into its own hands. He said it was not right for those in power to pass judgement on who was right or wrong and to decide who should live or die.

In a tweet, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said: "Apprehensions of a repeat of the Vikas Dubey encounter has come true, and people were discussing about the 'truth' behind the encounter." Mayawati said that a high-level probe would set to rest all speculations, and bring the truth out in the open.

Earlier, Ahmad was taken from Ahmedabad to Prayagraj by the Uttar Pradesh Police on March 26 to produce him in court. On March 28, the court sentenced Ahmad and two others to life imprisonment in the 2006 Umesh Pal kidnapping case. Ahmad and his aides had abducted Umesh Pal in 2006 and forced him to give a statement in court in their favour.

After UP minister Daya Shankar Singh and his wife and former minister Swati Singh called it quits and got a divorce, ending their 22-year-old marriage, it is now the dispute between former minister and UP MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh a.k.a. Raja Bhaiya, and his wife Bhanvi Singh that is making news.

Earlier reports had said that Khalid and Zeeshan were handed over to the Uttar Pradesh Police's Special Task Force. Asad is on the run in connection with the sensational murder of Umesh Pal - a witness in former BSP MLA Raju Pal murder - that took place in Prayagraj in February. Zeeshan and Khalid, who helped Asad to hide in Delhi, were detained from Sangam Vihar.

They had allegedly managed to obtain two Aadhaar cards with different names and addresses but with photographs of Ali Ahmad on both. Police claimed to have recovered both identity cards with photos of Ali Ahmad from Atiq's old office building after taking one of his close associates, Rakesh a.k.a Lala, into police remand.