Ghazipur court convicts mukhtar ansari under gangsters act sentences him to 10 yrs in jail

Ghazipur court convicts mukhtar ansari under gangsters act sentences him to 10 yrs in jail

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 and is set to announce its verdict on brother Afzal Ansari, a sitting Bahujan Samaj Party MP from Ghazipur who’s currently out on bail.

If he’s sentenced to over two years of prison, he will lose his Lok Sabha membership.

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.

This isn’t his first conviction in recent times. In December 2022, he was sentenced to 10 years rigorous imprisonment (RI) and slapped with a fine of Rs 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.