A letter written purportedly by the fugitive wife of slain former MP and alleged gangster Atiq Ahmed to chief minister Yogi Adityanath on March 27 has been circulating on social media, in which she fears her husband would be killed if the government fails to take her complaint seriously.

Shaista Parveen also accuses a “cabinet minister in your government” of conspiring against her family.

The letter is handwritten in Hindi. It is addressed to Adityanath and bears Shaista’s name and a signature.

A home department official declined to confirm the letter’s authenticity.

The letter would have been written after Shaista went into hiding on February 27, three days after the assassination of lawyer Umesh Pal, prime witness in a murder case in which Atiq and his brother Ashraf had been arrested.

Shaista and her son Asad were accused in the murder. Asad was killed in a police encounter on Thursday, while Atiq and Ashraf were shot dead on Saturday by gunmen in public while in police custody.

The letter begins by referring to Umesh’s murder and says the Ahmed family was falsely implicated in it.

It says, without mentioning names, that the family’s problems began after the Bahujan Samaj Party in February declared Shaista as its candidate for Allahabad mayor, to be elected in May.

“Since then a local leader who is a cabinet minister in your government started conspiring to keep me away from the election. It was under this conspiracy that a person (purportedly Umesh) was killed as it was inevitable that my husband would be blamed for it,” the letter says.

After Shaista went into hiding, the BSP dropped her as candidate.

“A conspiracy has been hatched to kill my husband Atiq Ahmed and my brother-in-law Ashraf while bringing them from Ahmedabad (Sabarmati) and Bareilly jails (for questioning)…. Your statement about ‘reducing to dust’ has given some police officers an opportunity to execute the plan to kill my husband and brother-in-law,” the letter says.

Adityanath had said in the Assembly on February 25 that he would “reduce the mafia to dust”.

Adityanath, speaking at a government event in Lucknow on Tuesday, said: “Uttar Pradesh is favourable for industries. Earlier, people used to be afraid even to take the names of certain districts. But the mafia now cannot threaten any businessman here. Law and order in the state is excellent.”

He didn’t mention the murders of Atiq and Ashraf.