During the 24-hour marathon discussion on the “Vision Document 2047” in the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, Samajwadi Party MLA Pooja Pal delivered an emotional statement. She spoke about the murder of her husband, Raju Pal, and the justice that followed. Pooja Pal is an MLA from Prayagraj. She said, “I lost my husband, who was a respected son of this society. The entire community knows how he died and who did what.”
In her statement, Pooja Pal also thanked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. According to her, CM Yogi Adityanath played an important role in securing justice for her. The woman legislator said, “I want to thank the Hon’ble Chief Minister, who took pains to see my tears, tears no one had seen for years. He saw my sorrow and my pain, and he helped my family. He gave them a chance at life. I want to thank a Chief Minister who brought in and adopted this policy. Today, the people look at the mafia of Uttar Pradesh with confidence in him. No mafia or goon in our country will be able to stop us. We have fulfilled our duty to bring this country back on track.”
Pooja Pal has become an MLA for the third time. Puja Pal recalled how she had been married for just nine days when Atiq Ahmed murdered her husband, leaving her a widow. Looking back, she said, “I did not enter that household to become an MLA. But when the incident happened to me, I raised my voice for justice and worked hard to honor my rights. In the way I thought was right, sometimes I regarded people as family, sometimes I considered you part of our brotherhood, and I drew strength from all these people. Our family was very poor—we had neither money nor a car nor any facility to do this work.”
She remembered that she campaigned through her own effort and fought the election with her own money. She said that when she contested for the first time in 2005, she didn’t even know who her opponent was.
It may be recalled that Pooja Pal’s husband, Raju Pal, was murdered in 2005 when he was an MLA from the Allahabad (Prayagraj) West Assembly constituency. The name of Atiq Ahmad, a notorious mafia figure at the time, surfaced as being behind the murder. Atiq Ahmad was accused in the case, and the incident prompted Pooja Pal to enter politics. In the 2007 Assembly elections, she defeated Atiq Ahmad’s brother, Mohammad Ashraf, and became an MLA.
There are many examples of Atiq Ahmad’s brutality; one incident from 2006 involved him flaying a man and dumping him at a crossroads. What’s more, after the incident, he called the police and said, “I have punished him; now you take him away.” This episode shows how brazenly he committed acts of barbarity. However, that same Atiq Ahmad and his brother were killed in 2023 during Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s tenure. The incident occurred when the two brothers were being taken to Prayagraj Medical College for questioning in the Umesh Pal murder case.
A woman named Jayashree was also a victim of Atiq’s cruelty; her brother was killed by electric shocks. Despite being a Samajwadi Party MLA, the statement given by Pooja Pal reflects not only her own anguish but also the pain of every family that suffered from Atiq Ahmad’s brutality.
