Atiq Ahmed's assailants have been identified as Lovelesh Tiwari, Sunny and Arun Maurya.
The three men who shot and killed Atiq Ahmed, a notorious gangster and former lawmaker, and his brother Ashraf on Saturday had followed them all day, posing as journalists with fake identification cards and a camera, sources said on Sunday, suggesting a carefully planned murder.
According to the police, the assailants, Lovelesh Tiwari, Sunny and Arun Maurya, have confessed that they wanted to eliminate Atiq Ahmed and become famous in the underworld.
They arrived in Prayagraj on Thursday and stayed at a lodge. The manager of the lodge is being questioned by the police.
The killers have said they planned the attack after learning that the brothers were in police custody and were being taken to a hospital for a medical check-up.
They decided that posing as journalists was how they could get very close to Atiq and tracked him all day on Saturday with other journalists.
According to witnesses, the three men approached Atiq and Ashraf outside the Motilal Nehru Divisional Hospital in Prayagraj around 10 pm, when the handcuffed men were being escorted in from the gates.
They pretended to be part of the media scrum with guns tucked in and then opened fire at close range. Arun Maurya fired the first bullet from point-blank at Atiq's head. More than 20 rounds were fired by the killers and not one from the police. Atiq and Ashraf died on the spot.
The police have said they recovered three fake media ID cards, a microphone and a camera from the assailants. The assailants surrendered to the police after the shooting and were arrested. Lovelesh was hit by one of the bullets on his foot and is in hospital.
Atiq Ahmed was a former member of Parliament from Phulpur constituency in Uttar Pradesh. He had more than 90 criminal cases against him, including murder, kidnapping and extortion. He was also accused of assaulting a professor at Allahabad University in 2018. He was lodged in a jail in Gujarat in 2019 under the National Security Act.
His brother Ashraf was also a gangster and had several cases against him. He was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police on Friday in connection with a murder case.
The killing of Atiq and Ashraf came days after their son and nephew, Asad Ahmed, was killed in an encounter with the police in the Jhansi district on Wednesday.