This is the season of Uttar Pradesh gangsters, mafiosi, the bad guys. You can choose your own adjective. The good thing is, this is a particularly bad season for them. At least for most of them.
The fresh conviction of Mukhtar Ansari and brother Afzal comes on the heels of the dramatic on-camera assassination of Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf in Prayagraj.
Mukhtar Ansari, in many ways, has been an even more prominent presence in eastern UP. Not so much in Prayagraj, but if you go generally north-east, east of it (see the district map of Uttar Pradesh), you see Mirzapur, Ghazipur, Chandauli, and so on. Those are the areas that Mukhtar Ansari and his clan have been dominating.
That was also the area of the worst, the most violent, gang fights. In Atiq Ahmed’s domain there were no big, movie-like gang wars. But in these districts of north-eastern UP, that has been the norm for more than two decades now.
Now, the important thing is that Mukhtar Ansari, convicted again today, has been involved in a lot of bad things. But a couple of things you can say without the ‘allegedlys’ because lately he’s begun to get convicted in courts. This is a change of fortunes because, for a long time, he only got acquittals. Even in cases where there were supposedly a lot of eyewitnesses, they turned hostile, some dropped dead, and he never got convicted.
He spent a lot of time in jail. He kept coming out of jail. He kept contesting elections from jail or from outside. He joined multiple parties, once even launched a party of his own, has been MLA for five terms from the constituency of Mau, from where his son Abbas is now the MLA.
So, he ruled that pocket borough on his own. Mau is not far from Varanasi, and in the general lawless expanse in the mafia land of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Unfortunately, in eastern Uttar Pradesh, these districts together had become, over the past 30-35 years, much worse than the dacoit lands of Chambal etc.
The dacoit lands were romanticised, movies were made about them. But dacoits at least did this simple thing of robbing the rich. They didn’t always distribute it to the poor — but they robbed the landed rich and they were confined to that area.
These guys, the gangsters of this region, ran very complex mafias. Somebody controlled coal mining, somebody roadbuilding, almost all fought for government contracts.
Basically, these mafias began to rise in the mid-1980s. Remember, mid-1980s-onwards, India’s economy began to grow faster. Rajiv Gandhi also came to power with a big majority and there was a lot of emphasis on development in the most backward areas.
So, a lot of money began coming in. Now, think, through whom does the government spend that money? The government does it through contractors. In a largely lawless region, contractors’ mafias naturally came up and soon they were fighting with each other for territory, for contracts. With stakes so high, killings came easy and life became cheap.
Then these came in contact with the mafias in Mumbai, or what used to be Bombay then, including Dawood Ibrahim’s group, Arun Gawli’s group. Now, they began getting the kind of weapons that the police in the heartland were never used to — that is, AK-47s.
Terrorism in Punjab or insurgency in the northeast are different things. But in straightforward gangland warfare, the first time AK-47s came to be used in this part of Uttar Pradesh, the name of Mukhtar Ansari featured.
Also Read: Ghazipur court convicts Mukhtar Ansari under Gangsters Act, sentences him to 10 yrs in jail
Convictions begin
Mukhtar Ansari has been moved again, like Atiq, from jail to jail to jail, because whichever jail he was in, he was running his empire from there. He was then moved to a jail in Punjab, in Ropar. From there, he’s now been brought to Banda jail, because verdicts are being read in several cases now against him.
He has to be present when verdicts are read, and the latest was Saturday, 29 April.
This again, was a serious case. You can read more details on the court order here. There’s the Gangster Act, and he has the distinction of having at least nine murder cases registered against him while he was in jail.
Now, it’s difficult to research these things, because these things go into folklore, it is hard to figure out what is true and what’s mythology. But generally, if you check and cross-check, I can see that he is the kind of don who had nine murder cases registered against him while he was in jail.
So, he could allegedly or supposedly carry out these hits, or have his people carry out these hits, while in jail.
Now, at least in some cases, you can dispense with the ‘allegedly’, as he’s been convicted twice in the past few months. On 21 September 2022, he was convicted by the Allahabad High Court’s Lucknow bench. In this case, he’d been acquitted in the trial court. The state police filed an appeal in the high court, which convicted and sentenced him to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment. And what was the charge?
That, while imprisoned, he had attacked a jailer and pulled a gun on him in 2003. The jailer at Lucknow district jail had dared to check people who were coming in to meet Ansari as he used to run his empire from jail. The jailer was S.K. Awasthi.
Nineteen years later, Mukhtar Ansari was convicted. Which was rare, because usually UP’s dons, especially in the Ansari clan, get acquitted. Witnesses disappear, most turn hostile, some drop dead. Often police conveniently dismiss these as suicide.
Shortly after this conviction, on 15 December, he was again convicted under the Gangster Act, a very tough law, and given 10 years in jail. So, 10 plus seven, and now another 10. Keep track of this moving scorecard as many other cases remain.
Ansari continues to be in jail, that is not to say that he cannot run his empire from jail. But it may be tougher now.
His brother Afzal Ansari was also a co-accused in the 2005 case involving the murder of MLA Krishnanand Rai, where altogether seven people were killed. He is the BSP MP from Ghazipur (now disqualified after his conviction), and do you know who he defeated from there? He defeated Manoj Sinha, a minister in the first Narendra Modi government. Sinha is now the lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir.
Afzal Ansari contested the last time from the BSP, which had an alliance with the SP then. The votes got combined and he won. It was a rare victory for the Opposition in Uttar Pradesh in an election that the BJP swept.
Distinguished lineage to mafia notoriety
Now, who is Mukhtar Ansari? He’s a little bit different — in fact, socially, very different — from Atiq Ahmed.
Atiq Ahmed came from the boondocks, nowhere. He was just a poor kid who failed his Class 10. He became a chhota criminal in his teenage — reputedly carried out his first murder at the age of 17. But still he had come from poverty, no privilege, hardly any education, except 10th fail, if you can call that education.
On the contrary, Mukhtar Ansari comes from a very distinguished family. On one side, his grandfather Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari was elected Congress president in 1927. Before that, he had been the president of the Indian Muslim League from 1920-1921. He was a doctor. He had done his medicine in Madras and then he had gone to the University of Edinburgh for further education.
Then he joined the Muslim League, played a prominent part in the Khilafat movement, then fell out with the Muslim League as he opposed a rising Jinnah, and came to the Congress. As Congress president, his predecessor was S. Srinivasa Iyengar, and his successor, Motilal Nehru.
The old publishing hub in Delhi’s Daryaganj, Ansari Nagar, is named after him.
Mukhtar Ansari’s grandfather from the other (maternal) side — the nana — was none else than Brigadier Mohammad Usman.
Brigadier Usman became one of the first war heroes of Independent India in 1948. He was commanding a brigade at just 36. He had the option of going to Pakistan but stayed on and commanded his brigade. He was called the ‘Lion of Naushera’. He carried out that famous counter-attack in the town of Jhangar, which his brigade had lost earlier.
He wanted to redeem his brigade’s pride and his own and his nation’s, so he launched a huge counter-attack.
In the course of it, he died. But his brigade recaptured Jhangar, which remains his gift to the nation. He was awarded a posthumous Maha Vir Chakra.
That’s Mukhtar Ansari’s lineage. If you want to see other connections, Hamid Ansari, our former vice-president, is related to him, but not as closely as is said in folklore. He’s like a second cousin.
The fact, however, is that he has ruled this region as the reigning ‘bahubali’. From the 1980s onwards, he got himself involved in mafia activity. Around that time, this region had two contractors’ mafias, both run by Hindu strongmen.
One mafia was run by Makhanu Singh, which Ansari belonged to. There was a rival mafia, led by a man called Sahib Singh, which also had a member who grew prominent later. That was Brijesh Singh. Please do take note, as his name will come up as we go along.
That enmity between the two, or rivalries — rivalries in the gangland become enmity — led to much blood-letting. You fire at each other initially with kattas (countrymade guns), then with sophisticated handguns, going on to AK-47s.
Now, Ansari has been convicted in three cases. But earlier, even more famously, he and his brother Afzal both got acquitted in probably the most important case in which they were charged. This was the case of the assassination of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai on 29 November 2005.
Krishnanand Rai was a local BJP leader who made one big “mistake”. He contested elections in 2002 in what was seen by the Ansari clan as their territory. He won his election on a BJP ticket and that was not to be accepted. What also became evident — or that is what Ansari complained about — was that Krishnand Rai got help from Brijesh Singh to get elected.
Brijesh Singh was a member of the rival gang. After Sahib Singh and Makhanu Singh, these two inherited those legacies — Ansari inherited Makhanu Singh’s, and Brijesh Singh, Sahib Singh’s.
The Ansari gang believed that Krishnanand Rai was helped by Brijesh Singh and, now, as MLA, Rai was helping Brijesh Singh get a greater share of the contracts. And the whole fight in that region was about government contracts. It was about thekedaari, then other stuff came in — liquor, gun-running — but the most money was coming from government contracts.
We will tell you the Brijesh Singh story in a subsequent instalment in this series on UP mafias.
Also Read: Gang lords like Atiq eliminated regularly in UP—It only cements ‘long-live’ mafia tradition
Mortal combat
In any case, this is about territory. Gangs are like wolf packs, so if one wolf pack goes into the other’s territory, there is bound to be a mortal combat and that is what started in this case.
On 29 November 2005, Krishnanand Rai went to attend a wedding, when somebody said, ‘Look, you’re attending a wedding. Thoda sa time do (spare some time), there is a cricket match going on. In fact, the match is about to start. You are the local MLA, if you can come for a few minutes and inaugurate the cricket match.’
So, poor fellow — and I have double sympathy for him — ignored the warnings of the UP special task force men who were assigned to protect him, who said they had heard that some hired killers were seen in Mukhtar Ansari’s house. He said, ‘It’s just a cricket match.’
So, the reason I feel particularly sympathetic towards him is simply because he took a chance with the security for the sake of a cricket match. He went to inaugurate the cricket match — not in his bulletproof car, such as the bulletproof cars were then, and without his security. When he was coming back, he was attacked. He was attacked by gunmen who had AK-47s.
How many bullets did they fire? More than 400 casings of bullets were found from the spot. Krishnanand Rai’s body had 21 bullets. Krishnanand Rai and six others accompanying him were killed. A total of 67 bullets were pulled out of the bodies — all 7.62 mm, all from AK-47s, except one.
In Krishnanand Rai’s body, they found one shotgun bullet.
Where was that fired from? That was fired — and I will not get too explicit — in the lower part of his body, sort of ritually, to prevent him from running away. So, this was that kind of a killing.
This caused a sensation. Local police filed a case but UP was under Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government at the time. The government wasn’t particularly sympathetic to the BJP MLA who had been assassinated. That is one part of the story.
The other part of the story is that that government also had its linkages. They may deny it any number of times, but they had their linkages with these underworld dons, particularly on the Muslim side then.
One after the other, UP Police officers who were assigned this case gave up, saying there was too much pressure. Krishnanand Rai’s wife Alka went to the Allahabad High Court. The court ordered a CBI probe. The CBI carried out a probe, which took forever, and, finally, the Supreme Court also transferred the trial to Delhi.
The verdict in the trial came in July 2019. I will share with you a story done by Apoorva Mandhani, from our legal reporting team, explaining what the judge said while acquitting Mukhtar Ansari and all the other accused.
The judge said, ‘Look, I have no choice, because all the witnesses have turned hostile.’
There were five witnesses, including Brijesh Kumar Rai, who was the brother of Krishnanand Rai. The story was that one of the five witnesses — Ramkirat Singh — was the driver of the vehicle following Krishnanand Rai’s. The other four were riding in that car.
But the fact is that the three others who were not members of Krishnanand Rai’s family later went back on their evidence and refused to recognise any of the assassins.
This, despite the fact that the CBI had, during the investigation, got each of these witnesses to sign on the back of the photograph of each of the assassins, saying, “I recognise him”. But once they came to court, they went back on all of this.
Once that happened, the case had already weakened. Then these three also said that the other two, including Brijesh Kumar Rai, were not even present. That further knocked the prosecution’s case.
The judge said, ‘Look, I don’t have sufficient evidence to convict this guy.’
In 2019 — 14 years after the assassination — these people were acquitted.
Krishnanand Rai’s wife Alka Rai has filed an appeal in the Delhi High Court, as has the CBI. As the case comes up, we’ll keep you posted on what is happening.
Alka Rai became the BJP MLA from the same constituency, Mohammadabad, in 2017, but lost to a member of the Ansari family in 2022. She lost to a nephew of Mukhtar Ansari, so that blood feud continues there.
So, the fact is, Ansari got away in the biggest — and, at this point, I have to say, alleged — hit of his life, and one of the most sensational mass murders in the history of gang warfare in Uttar Pradesh.
See what the judge said in this case: “This is a gruesome case involving the murder of seven persons. The investigation of the case was transferred from UP to Delhi, by courts. Unfortunately, the case suffered because all witnesses turned hostile.”
The judge, Arun Bhardwaj, wrote: “The case in hand is another example of prosecution failing because of hostile witnesses. If the witnesses had the benefit of the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018, during the trial, the result may have been different.”
Once again, you can see the judge is not convinced that these people are innocent, but he’s having to let them go. Now, if this was a sensational case, there was yet another one. And that goes to an even older period. 1991.
Also Read: Gangsters Act: The controversial law behind Yogi govt’s crackdown on dons like Mukhtar Ansari
Deadly Mafia-politics brew
In 1991, an assassination was carried out — again of somebody who was involved in mafia activity, maybe not that big, but mafia activity — because the fight between wolf packs is always about territory.
His name was Awadhesh Rai. He was also a chhota politician of sorts. Awadhesh Rai was assassinated on 3 August 1991, when he was standing outside his house with his brother Ajay Rai.
Ajay Rai survived that day, and has been a politician. He’s been an MLA five times from multiple parties, including thrice for the BJP. In 2014 and 2019, he is the one whom the Congress put up as their candidate against Narendra Modi in Varanasi. Now, that’s one way of protecting secularism.
His brother got assassinated in front of his eyes, but Ajay Rai himself has many serious cases against him, including Gangster Act, killing people, etc, because he also got into the business that is the most popular in these parts.
Awadhesh Rai was again killed the same way. Bullets were rained on him. He died and that case has gone on since then. It’s been 32 years since, and that case is still under trial.
One of the cases in which Mukhtar Ansari got convicted under Gangster Act also involves the Awadhesh Rai murder. That is different, however, from the Awadhesh Rai murder trial. That trial is still going on. And we’ll see where that trial ends up. Gangster Act is a law that’s enforced as consequential to the main crime.
Now, before I let you go, I will give you some data, so you can see how deep this intermixing of crime, mafia and politics in Uttar Pradesh, particularly eastern Uttar Pradesh, is.
Look at Mukhtar Ansari. Mukhtar Ansari has been a five-term MLA since 1996, when he got elected on a BSP ticket from Mau, his pocket borough. In 2002, he got elected as an Independent from Mau.
In 2007, he again got elected as an Independent. In 2012, nobody would give him a ticket, so he founded a party of his own: Quami Ekta Dal (QED). QED, nice acronym. You know what QED means in science. In 2012, he got elected from QED from Mau. Five years later, in 2017, he was back with the BSP. In 2022, he did not contest but his son Abbas contested on a ticket from the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party, which is a party of the Rajbhar community.
Earlier, at one point, it had allied with the BJP. Now again it looks like it’s going to be inclined towards the BJP. Abbas Ansari, who is in Chitrakoot jail, has got further cases filed against him for allegedly running an extortion racket from prison.
His wife Nikhat has also been arrested, allegedly for going and meeting him illegally every day and also for smuggling mobile phones etc to him. In fact, the story is that she rented a place in Chitrakoot so she could meet him every day.
In that case, the jail superintendent, the deputy police constable etc have also been suspended, and criminal cases filed against them as well.
So, that is Ansari and his story. Now, look at the man he was enemies with, whose brother he — allegedly so far — had killed.
Ajay Rai, who himself did not turn out to be such a nice or regular guy — he’s been there, done that — is also a five-time MLA. In 1996, from Kolasla constituency on a BJP ticket. In 2002, same constituency, BJP ticket. Ditto in 2007.
In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, contesting on a Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket, he lost when Mukhtar Ansari also contested from Varanasi. Mukhtar Ansari came very close to defeating BJP stalwart Murli Manohar Joshi there.
He only lost by about 17,000 votes. So, the story goes, in that election, the situation got so polarised that a lot of Ajay Rai’s own followers decided to vote not for him but for Murli Manohar Joshi instead so a Muslim don won’t win.
The other other part of the story is that Ajay Rai himself — once he figured he wasn’t going to win — got his supporters to transfer his votes to Murli Manohar Joshi, so Mukhtar would not win. You can sift fact from fiction! And remember, a bit of both could be true.
There is a sting to this tale, which I’ll tell you in a minute. By 2012, the constituency of Kolasla — from where Ajay Rai had been elected thrice — had ceased to exist because of delimitation, so he now contested from Pindra on a Congress ticket. From BJP to SP to Congress.
Again, the beautiful thing about gangsters — about the underworld in Uttar Pradesh — is that they are completely secular when it comes to their approach to which political party they are going to join.
So, the three-term BJP MLA contested on an SP ticket in 2009 against Murli Manohar Joshi for the Lok Sabha in Varanasi and lost. In the 2012 assembly polls, on a Congress ticket from Pindra, and he won. In 2014 and 2019, he was the Congress’ candidate for the Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi against Narendra Modi.
These stories will continue because it is so fascinating and so complex a phenomenon that it might take many chapters,
While concluding this though, I will do something that I usually don’t do. That is, read from my own writings. You can read that original article here.
Now, Mukhtar Ansari had also decided to contest in Varanasi in the 2014 election against Narendra Modi. That’s where the Congress had fielded Ajay Rai, Mukhtar Ansari’s old enemy.
But at the last moment, Mukhtar Ansari said, no, no, I will not contest. I am withdrawing, so that my voters can vote for Ajay Rai to prevent the division of the secular vote.
So, I will read the few lines I wrote:
“But now Mukhtar, who was to contest from Varanasi to save secularism, first on the BSP ticket, and then on his own party’s, the Quami Ekta Dal’s (it is just him, two brothers and a few henchmen), has withdrawn in support of — hold your breath — Ajay Rai. As secular coalitions go, this must be the most spectacularly fraudulent and immoral ever. It will give the mafias a bad name. You want me to confuse — and infuriate — you further? Ajay, a five-term MLA, has been elected for the BJP thrice. So, the Congress has found their own ‘secular mascot’ for Varanasi against Modi. He’s also been in the SP.
“Mukhtar Ansari has been with the BSP in the past and now supports the Congress candidate.”
“As they would say in Varanasi”, I wrote, “Dono ney ghat-ghat ka paani piya hai (both have been there, done that). As soon as the election ends, the war will resume in jail or outside.”
The war has been going on, and that war actually involves more characters than just Ansari or Rai families. It’s a very involved story, which I will tell you about in my next piece in this series in a day or two.