Lucknow: A special MP/MLA court in Varanasi Wednesday sentenced gangster and ex-Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) MLA Mukhtar Ansari to life imprisonment. This comes a day after he was convicted in a 34-year-old case lodged against him for allegedly forging signatures of the then district magistrate (DM) and superintendent of police (SP) of Ghazipur to obtain an arms licence for a double-barreled gun.
The court of special judge (MP/MLA) Avnish Gautam had found Mukhtar Ansari guilty under sections 467 (forgery of a document which purports to be a valuable security or a will), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), and section 120-b (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and section 30 of The Arms Act.
Speaking to ThePrint Wednesday before the pronouncement of the punishment, Udayraj Shukla, the special prosecution officer, Varanasi, explained the background of the case. Shukla represented the Crime Branch, Crime Investigation Department (CB-CID) which had investigated the case and lodged an FIR against Ansari, the then arms clerk Gauri Shankar Lal, five others named and some unknown accused in the Mohammadabad police station of Ghazipur on 4 December, 1990.
“The case pertains to Ghazipur when the accused had sought a licence for a double-barreled gun from Alok Ranjan, then Ghazipur DM, in 1987. While testifying in the court, former Ghazipur DM Jagan Mathews mentioned that when he was posted as the DM, the then Ghazipur superintendent of police (SP) informed him that some arms licences were issued from his office in a wrongful manner. He conducted an inquiry and he found that the licences were issued under the tenure of former DM Alok Ranjan and former SP Devraj Nagar. He wrote to the state government to conduct a probe into the matter. So, the state government initiated a CB-CID investigation in the case which went on for over a year and in December 1990, Ashfaq Ahmed, additional SP, CB-CID, got an FIR lodged in the case against Ansari, Lal and others,” he said.
Shukla said that while the matter pertained to Ghazipur, it was transferred to a Varanasi court because section 13 (2) of The Prevention of Corruption Act was also invoked in the case as the arms clerk and other officials, were also named in the case.
“A trial was initiated in the case and several important witnesses testified, including Alok Ranjan and Devraj Nagar. Several officials who testified were high-level officials and the turning point of the case was the opinion of the signature expert,” said Shukla.
Alok Ranjan, who was the Ghazipur DM at that time, later became the chief secretary of UP, while Devraj Nagar, then Ghazipur SP, became the UP DGP.
“The expert said that the signatures on the sanction letter of the licence are not of the then DM Alok Ranjan. Nagar too testified in court that his signatures were forged. When I started pursuing the case, it was revealed that the report of the signatures from the forensic laboratory had gone missing from records. I then wrote to the laboratory again and sought a second copy of the report,” he added.
Shukla said that since the case has a section of the IPC under which the maximum punishment is life imprisonment, Ansari could be sentenced to life imprisonment.
“It depends on the court, what decision it takes. We will push for maximum punishment,” he said.
Vinay Singh, additional district government counsel (criminal), Varanasi MP/MLA court, said that they will request the court to sentence Ansari to maximum punishment.
“He (Ansari) has been proven guilty under IPC sections 420, 467, 468, and 120-b and section 30 of the Arms Act. He has been acquitted under section 13 (2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The maximum punishment that can be given to him under IPC section 467 is life imprisonment. We will request the court that he be punished with the maximum punishment,” he said.
Meanwhile, senior advocate Shreenath Tripathi, who represented Ansari, told ThePrint that they argued before the court on two main points.
“First that the case doesn’t fall under the purview of the anti-corruption act because when the incident took place, the act had not been implemented which is why my client was acquitted in the case. Further, I said that my client only made an application for arms at the DM’s office which is confidential and secret and that he did not know what someone did to it after submission of the application. Since my client benefitted from the licence, he was booked for conspiracy, but his matter was heard separately as part of an independent trial. It was assumed that the conspiracy was hatched with the arms clerk who died during the trial,” he said.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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