Lucknow: An MP/MLA court in Ghazipur convicted and sentenced jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari to 10 years of imprisonment in connection with a Gangsters Act case from 2007.
The case was registered two years after the 2005 murder of BJP leader Krishnanand Rai, in which he was acquitted four years ago.
According to initial information, the court has also imposed a fine on Mukhtar. His brother, Afzal Ansari, a sitting Bahujan Samaj Party MP from Ghazipur who’s currently out on bail, was sentenced to four years in prison and a fine of Rs 1 lakh.
The case in which five-time MLA Mukhtar was convicted dates back to 2007, when Ghazipur Police registered a case under the stringent Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986. It was registered on the basis of several other criminal cases in which the Ansari brothers were allegedly involved, including rioting, Rai’s murder and the 1977 abduction and murder of Nand Kishore Rungta, a coal trader and an office-bearer of Varanasi’s Vishva Hindu Parishad unit.
The case was registered on the basis of a gang chart that Ghazipur police had prepared.
A statement from the UP Police, issued in the evening, said that of 60 cases lodged against Mukhtar, trial is ongoing in at least 20 “due to the Ghazipur police’s effective pursuit” of them.
With Afzal’s conviction, he is set to lose his Lok Sabha membership — Section 8 of the The Representation of the People Act, the law that governs the conduct of elections in India, says that an MP who has been convicted for over two years will stand disqualified for the duration of sentence and a further period of six years.
This isn’t Mukhtar’s first conviction in recent times. In December 2022, he was sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment (RI) and slapped with a fine of Rs 50,000 in another Gangster Act case registered at Lucknow’s Hazratganj police in 1999.
In September 2022, Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court sentenced him to seven years in jail for threatening a jailer.
After Saturday’s verdict, Rai’s nephew Anand Rai was visibly relieved.
“I thank the court with all my heart. I further thank maharajji (CM Yogi Adityanath) who has made this state fear-free due to the policy of zero tolerance. In the previous governments, these goondas and mafias were tormenting people and their only profession was to extort money from the public. Today, they are being swept away. Today, they are either in jail or up there (dead),” he told the media.
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Krishnanand Rai murder case
It’s significant to note that the conviction comes four years after a CBI court in Delhi acquitted Mukhtar and Afzal in Rai’s murder citing hostile witnesses.
Rai, a sitting BJP MLA from Mohammadabad constituency, was shot dead on the evening of 29 November, 2005, while he was on his way back from Siyari, where he had gone to inaugurate a cricket match.
According to reports, he had gone there without his bulletproof vehicle and security guards despite warnings from Uttar Pradesh’s Special Task Force about a possible threat to his life.
According to media reports, a group of assailants had sprayed him with bullets from automatic rifles. Six other people were killed in the incident.
The killing had sparked a political outrage, with senior BJP leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh and Manoj Sinha demanding a CBI probe.
Speaking to media ahead of the verdict Saturday, Krishnanand Rai’s wife Alka Rai told mediapersons that the matter pertains to the court and she will respect its decision, whatever it may be.
This is an updated version of this report.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)