An Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Municipal Councillor Mohammad Akbar, 55, was shot dead inside his gym around 8 am in Malerkotla city of Punjab on Sunday.
According to police, Akbar was jogging inside his gym, which he runs free of cost for the youngsters, when an unidentified person, who had come with his accomplice on a motorcycle, shot him dead from a point-blank distance.
Police said that according to the video footage fitted inside the gym, a youth who was in a black T-shirt without any mask shot at Akbar as he got close.
The video footage also showed that the youth took out his revolver which was stuck by him in his back pocket and shot at Akbar the moment the latter got close to him. He then fled from the spot along with his accomplice who waited on a motorcycle waiting outside the gym.
Akbar was a first-time councillor on the AAP ticket as he had won his maiden municipal contest on a Congress ticket in February 2021 but had shifted to AAP ahead of the February 2022 assembly elections.
In January 2020, his elder brother Mohammad Anwar, who was a Congress councillor, was also shot dead. Malerkotla town is the only Muslim-dominated assembly seat in Punjab.
According to media reports, Mohammad Anwar was the owner of Rani Mahal palace, where gangster Abdul Rashid Ghuddu was killed in November 2019, when Ghuddu was out on parole.
Anwar himself was shot at when he was pillion riding a two-wheeler. Mohammad Akbar joined active politics after his brother’s death.
According to information, apart from the gym, Akbar also owned a garments business, a real estate firm and a few other ventures.
Malerkotla MLA Mohammad Jamil-Ur-Rehman has expressed shock at the murder and demanded the guilty be punished.
Meanwhile, the police said that an FIR had been lodged against unknown persons on charges of murder and the investigations were on.
