Banda: Gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari died at the age of 60 following a heart attack in jail in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda
He was a five-time MLA from Mau.
According to reports, his health condition deteriorated after he broke his Ramzan fast and was admitted to Government Medical College in Banda around 8.25pm amid heavy security arrangement. A team of nine doctors attended to him before he died, DGP Prashant Kumar said, quoting the medical bulletin shared by Banda Medical College.
Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) were imposed across Uttar Pradesh following his death, which drew curtains on his over four-decade reign of terror in eastern UP.
His family members, however, claimed that he was slow-poisoned to death in jail. “This happened for the second time. Around 40 days ago also he was given poison. And recently on March 19 and March 22, he was again given this (poison) due to which his condition is bad,” his brother, Afzal Ansari, was quoted as saying.
Notably, Ansari’s paternal grandfather, Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, was a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress and served as its president in 1927. He also served as Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia. His maternal grandfather Brigadier Mohammad Usman was a decorated officer and conferred with Maha Vir Chakra posthumously after he was martyred in Nowshera sector of Jammu and Kashmir during a conflict with Pakistan in 1948.
Ansari took to crime in 1980s just at the age of 17 amid lawlessness of Purvanchal, which was notorious for its criminal gangs vying for government contracts. His name first appeared in connection with Sachchidanand Rai murder case, stemming from a land dispute in Ghazipur district and soon he became a well-known face in the contract mafia circle.
He faced over 60 criminal cases, 16 of them for murder, but his first conviction happened only in 2022 when was given a seven-year jail term for threatening a jailer.
On March 13, Mukhtar Ansari was sentenced to life imprisonment for using forged documents for obtaining an arms licence in 1990. This was the eighth case in which he was convicted and sentenced by a court in Uttar Pradesh in the past two years.
He, however, had been spending time behind the bars in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab jails since 2005. His name was on the list of 66 gangsters issued by Uttar Pradesh Police last year.
Ansari was elected as an MLA from the Mau constituency five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. He last contested the assembly polls in 2017.
He is survived by his wife and sons Abbas Ansari and Umar Ansari.
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