Samajwadi Party candidate for the upcoming Uttar Pradesh elections Atiq Ahmed on Thursday was charged with assaulting the staff of a college near Allahabad, Hindustan Times reported. Ahmed, an underworld don-turned-politician, entered the premises of the Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences along with his supporters on Wednesday and reportedly assaulted staff members who stopped them from entering the premises.

According to a spokesperson for SHIATS, Ahmed and his supporters demanded to meet the institute’s Vice-Chancellor RB Lal. They assaulted an on-duty security official after he told them that Lal was not in his office, and that an appointment would be required to meet him. They also allegedly beat up other members of the staff who tried to stop the assault.

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Allahabad Senior Superintendent of Police S Mathur said a case was registered against Ahmed and four of his supporters under sections of the Indian Penal Code “pertaining to rioting, unlawful assembly, dacoity and criminal intimidation”. Fifty other unnamed people have also been mentioned in the First Information Report filed in the case, Mathur said. SHIATS has shared CCTV footage of the incident with the police and the media.

However, the SP candidate from the Kanpur Cantonment constituency denied the allegations and said he had gone to meet Lal about two students, who were expelled for misbehaving with a member of the institute’s faculty. Ahmed, who has more than 150 cases pending against him, was arrested in 2008 for his alleged role in the 2005 murder of Bahujan Samaj Party legislator Raju Pal.

A former MP, he was thrown out of the party in 2008 after he voted against the Manmohan Singh government in the no-trust motion on the nuclear deal. However, he re-joined the party and contested unsuccessfully from Shrawasti in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The Samajwadi Party has also given a party ticket to jailed underworld don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s brother Sigbatullah Ansari.