Lucknow: Sanjeev Maheshwari alias Sanjeev Jeeva died on Wednesday in an open fire by unidentified persons in Court premises in Lucknow. Sanjeev Jeeva was the aide of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari, who is in jail.

The incident took place when he brought to the court for a hearing on an attempt to murder case from 2015. He is serving a life imprisonment in Barabanki jail, was shot dead by unknown assailants dressed as lawyers.  Four assailants fired around five to 6 rounds at Jeeva.

According to the DCP Aparna Rajat Kaushik said that an 18-month infant, Laxmi, accompanying her parents and a police constable suffered bullet injuries. Their condition was stated to be stable.

Lawyers at the crime scene caught hold of one of the assailants and handed him over to the police. He was identified as Vijay Yadav of Jaunpur. However, the other three shooters had fled the spot. The lawyers staged a protest against the state police by expressing their resentment on the incident of failing to ensure law and order and beefing up stricter security arrangements.

A lawyer alleged that the policemen escorting Jeeva had fled the scene when shots were fired at him and that they took it upon themselves to overpower one of the assailants.

The Yogi’s Government constituted a three-member SIT to probe Jeeva’s killing and security lapses on the part of cops accompanying the gangster. The SIT was constituted under the captaincy of Mohit Agarwal ADG (Technical) and the other members are Neelabja Chowdhary, IPS and Ayodhya range IG Praveen Kumar, IPS. The Government asked SIT complete the probe within 15 days.