Atiq wife lookalike spotted in Sitapur, cops on toes for hours

LUCKNOW A lookalike of absconder Shaista Parveen, wife of slain criminal-turned-politician Atiq Ahmed, kept cops on their toes in Sitapur for hours on the intervening night of Sunday-Monday. The police carried out an intense search operation across the district and checked over 100 vehicles after getting a tip-off about the presence of Parveen in a Muslim-dominated village near Jahangirabad.
Parveen, who carries a reward of ₹50,000, is one of the most wanted accused of UP Police and is at large after her name surfaced among the key conspirators in the sensational killings of lawyer Umesh Pal and his two police gunners in Prayagraj on February 24, 2023. She and Atiq Ahmed’s close aide Guddu Muslim, who was part of a team of assailants who executed Pal’s killing, are evading the police for nearly two years.
SP (Sitapur) Chakresh Mishra said a woman, accompanied by four-armed people in an SUV bearing Prayagraj registration number (UP70), visited a madrasa in Daanpurwa village on Sunday night.
“A search operation was carried out in the village and its adjoining areas. A woman, who was a lookalike of Shaista Parveen, was found travelling in Biswan area in an SUV, but was later found to be a local resident of Laharpur, Sitapur. She was allowed to go after verification,” he added.
The police crosschecked the woman’s identity and found that she was linked to Daanpurwa village where she attended a family function. Besides, a madrasa in the village was also checked, but nothing suspicious was found, he added.
Notably, Shaista Parveen did not turn up before the police even after the murders of her husband Atiq Ahmed and his gangster brother Khaleed Azim, who were sprayed with bullets by three assailants while being taken to a hospital for medical check-up in Prayagraj during their police custody remand on April 15 night, 2023. Two days before that, one of Ahmed’s five sons, Ali was gunned down by the UP STF in Jhansi while on the run after allegedly leading a group of assailants in the murder of Umesh Pal and his two police gunners.