Gangster Mukeem Kala, who had been the centrepiece of a communal BJP campaign before the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections alleging a Hindu exodus from Shamli district for fear of criminals, was shot dead by another inmate at Chitrakoot central jail on Friday, police said.

Anand Kumar, the director-general of the prisons department, said in the afternoon: “Anshul Dixit, an undertrial, shot and killed Mukeem Kala and Meraz Ali, two inmates, inside the high-security barracks of Chitrakoot jail at 10am. He also tried to kill five other inmates. The police rushed to the barracks and tried in vain to control him. They had to fire at him and kill him.”

According to sources, Mukeem, a resident of Shamli, had 56 cases of murder, dacoity and extortion against him, while Meraz had been a member of gangster turned politician Mukhtar Ansari’s gang. Anshul, a resident of Sitapur, was a contract killer the sources said.

The late Hukum Singh, the then BJP parliamentarian of Kairana in Shamli district, had in June 2016 created a flutter by alleging an exodus of Hindu residents to Haryana and Delhi for fear of Mukeem’s gang. Singh had release a list of 409 Shamli residents who he claimed had fled because of extortion demands and murder threats from the gang.

However, the claim had come under strain when journalists found out that many of those named in the list had never left Shamli and had no idea that such a claim had been made about them. Some others had said they had left Shamli because of business-related reasons.

However, Singh’s allegation was used to the hilt by the BJP to run a communal campaign before the 2017 Assembly elections. BJP leaders, including Adityanath, used to claim in their speeches that Hindus were fleeing Shamli for fear of Muslim criminals.