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Updated: Feb 22, 2020 03:56 IST

Aman Bahadur, the son of former Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) MLA Shamsher Bahadur Singh, was arrested by police on Friday in connection with the murder of Prashant Singh, 25, an engineering college drop-out. Bahadur is a former student of law of a private university on Faizabad Road, where Singh also studied engineering for three years before dropping out last year.

A senior policeman who is associated with the probe but did not wish to be identified, said that the motive for the murder was a dispute between two rival groups -- present and former students of the private university. He said that a scuffle broke out between the two groups during a party at a restaurant in Safedabad a few days ago, and resulted in Singh’s murder on Thursday.

Singh was stabbed to death in broad daylight at the entrance of Alaknanda Apartments, a gated housing society, in the posh Gomti Nagar extension on Thursday afternoon. The victim came in a sports utility vehicle (SUV) to meet one of his acquaintances at Alaknanda Apartments, where his killers were lying in wait for him , police said.

Police have identified six other accused and are on the lookout for them. The accused will be booked under the National Security Act (NSA) and Gangster Act in a bid “to send strong message to notorious elements”, said Lucknow Commissioner of Police (CP), Sujeet Pandey.

Singh was a BSP MLA between 2012 and 2017. He represented Dharauhra constituency in Lakhimpur Kheri district.

Pandey said the six other accused have been identified as Arpan Shukla, Vimal Singh, Abdul Gani Khan, Abhishek Pandey, Anjani Yadav and Hardik Kumar. Three are students of the same private university, where Singh studied till last year.

“We have decided to slap the NSA as well as the Gangster Act against all the assassins and the conspirators, besides other charges of murder and criminal conspiracy because of the audacious nature of the crime,” Pandey said, adding that the “involvement of more people is likely to emerge in due course”.