New Delhi: A Varanasi court Monday sentenced gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari to life in prison over the 1991 murder of Congress leader Awadhesh Rai.
Rai was shot dead on 3 August that year in front of the Varanasi house of his younger brother and former Congress MLA Ajay Rai.
Ajay Rai had named Mukhtar Ansari, his aide Bhim Singh and former MLA Abdul Kalim in the first information report (FIR).
The special MP/MLA court had concluded the hearing on 19 May in the 32-year-old case.
After Ansari’s conviction earlier in the day, Rai said he had full faith in the judiciary, “even though Ansari had tried to influence and murder witnesses in the case”.
His lawyer said the conviction was possible because two witnesses to the daylight murder stood firm on their testimony and “were not afraid of Ansari”.
In jail for nearly two decades, Ansari has won five state elections – including for the Bahujan Samaj Party – and yielded tremendous influence over eastern Uttar Pradesh since the early 90s.
A former MLA from Mau, Ansari was jailed in 2005 in connection with over 60 cases of murder, land-grabbing and extortion.
His convictions only began last year, with Rai’s murder being the fifth case in which he was found guilty.
In 2022, Uttar Pradesh’s courts meted out three convictions to Ansari.
On 21 September, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court convicted and sentenced him for threatening jailer S.K. Awasthi and pointing a pistol at him. In 2023, Lucknow district prison jailer Awasthi complained that he had been threatened after he ordered a search on Ansari’s visitors to prison.
On 23 September, the Lucknow bench again sentenced him to five years in a case registered in 1999 under the Gangsters Act. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 in this 23-year-old case.
On 15 December last year, Ansari and his aide Bhim Singh were sentenced to 10 years by the Gazipur Gangster Court in five cases related to murder and attempt to murder.
The fourth conviction came on 29 April this year, when Ghazipur’s MP/MLA Court sentenced him to 10 years in connection with a Gangsters Act case from 2007.
This case was registered two years after the 2005 murder of BJP leader Krishnanand Rai, in which Ansari was acquitted four years ago.
Earlier in January this year, the police registered a murder case against the 59-year-old in connection to the 2001 “Usri Chatti” gang war incident that killed three.
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