Lucknow, Mar 8 (IANS): The Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, in separate statements, have raised questions on the encounters being carried out after Umesh Pal's murder in Prayagraj.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav said, "What is the government trying to conceal by eliminating the accused through encounters?'

He further said, "The deceased was a BJP member, and a UP minister has been accused in a money deal. What is the government trying to hide in this case? Will the government initiate a probe against the minister?"

It is noteworthy that Atiq Ahmad's sister Aisha Noori has claimed in a press conference that UP minister Nand Gopal Nandi had taken a loan of Rs five crore from her brother and did not want to return the same. She alleged that he was now implicating Atiq Ahmad and his family in the Umesh Pal murder.

Meanwhile, Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati has said that the state government was trying to recreate the Vikas Dubey episode by staging encounters which now reflected the intentions of the government.

Vikas Dubey, an accused in the massacre of eight police personnel in Kanpur in July 2020, was killed in an encounter by the local police after he had been arrested from Madhya Pradesh.

She said it was strange that the police were focusing on killing the accused instead of arresting them.