Jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari dies of heart attack

Jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari died of a heart attack on March 28. He was brought to Banda Medical College in the evening after he was spotted lying unconscious in his barrack. He was 63.

Recently, he was hospitalised after complaining of abdominal pain in jail. His brother Afzal Ansari claimed that Mukhtar was poisoned in jail.

Meanwhile, police have beefed up security in and around Banda in view of the development and have imposed Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code in Mau, Banda, and Ghazipur.

Mukhtar had around 60 criminal cases pending against him in UP, Punjab, Delhi, and other states. Earlier on March 13, Ansari was sentenced to life imprisonment in a case related to the use of forged documents for obtaining an arms licence in 1990.

This was the eighth case in which the former five-time MLA has been convicted and sentenced by a court in UP in the past two years.

In December 2023, the MP/MLA Court in Varanasi had convicted Ansari for intimidating Mahavir Prasad Rungta, a key witness in the murder case of 26-year-old coal merchant Nand Kishor Rungta. Consequently, Ansari was sentenced to five and a half years of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 10,000.

Ansari has served as an MLA from Mau several times.

His name was on the list of 66 gangsters issued by Uttar Pradesh Police last year. His family members had earlier expressed apprehension that Mukhtar Ansari could be killed in a fake encounter.

The gangster-turned-politician did not contest the 2022 assembly elections and his seat was won by his son Abbas Ansari from the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP).

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