Mukhtar Ansari sentenced to 10-year jail term in Gangsters Act case

A Ghazipur court on Friday awarded 10 years imprisonment to jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari in a 2009 Gangsters Act case. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Ansari. The former five-term MLA was accused of plotting a conspiracy to kill one Kapil Dev Singh, who was murdered in 2009. An MP/MLA court in Ghazipur on Thursday held Ansari guilty in a case of the Gangster Act registered by the Uttar Pradesh police in 2009.  This is Ansari’s sixth conviction since September 2022.In April 2023, the Ghazipur MP-MLA court convicted and sentenced him to 10 years in jail in connection with the cases of the kidnapping of Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Nandkishore Rungta and the 2005 murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai, respectively. A Varanasi court also held Ansari guilty In June 2023 and sentenced him to life imprisonment for a 32-year-old murder case of Awadhesh Rai, who was shot dead outside the house of his brother and former MLA Ajai Rai.

He has been elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Mau constituency five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. He is the relative of former Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari. Mukhtar Ansari capitalized on the Muslim votebank to secure his electoral triumph during the Ghazipur-Mau area elections. The amalgamation of crime, politics, and religion instigated several outbreaks of communal violence within the region. Consequently, Ansari faced charges of inciting violence following one such riot. Notwithstanding, he was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the court. Mukhtar Ansari and his brother Afzal joined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 2007. The party allowed them in, after they claimed that they had been falsely framed in criminal cases for fighting against the "feudal system", and promised to refrain from participating in any crimes. The BSP chief Mayawati portrayed Mukhtar Ansari as Robin Hood and called him "a messiah of the poor".Ansari fought the 2009 Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi on a BSP ticket, while still lodged in the jail.[15] He lost to BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi by a margin of 17,211 votes; he received 27.94% of the votes, compared to Joshi's 30.52%.