The death of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, incarcerated in Banda jail of Uttar Pradesh, was followed by tightening of security in the eastern Uttar Pradesh districts of Mau, Ghazipur, Banda, and Varanasi. Prohibitory orders under CrPC Section 144 were imposed, and there was a special deployment of police personnel, apprehending tension in the area. In the coming months, as the general elections unfold, there is apprehension of communal tension.

Controversy surrounds Mukhtar’s death, as his son, Umar Ansari, suspects that his father was slow poisoned to death. Questions are being raised by opposition parties such as the Congress, BSP, and SP over gangsters of a particular community being targeted by the Yogi government.

“The death of a hostage or prisoner in any of the following circumstances will erode public confidence in the judicial process — while confined in a police station, in a fight inside the jail, on falling ill inside the prison, while being taken to hospital, during treatment in hospital, by showing a false encounter, by showing a false suicide, by showing casualties in an accident — all such doubtful cases should be probed under the supervision of a Supreme Court judge,” Akhilesh Yadav, SP chief and former UP CM, said.

Those sympathetic to the BJP believe that the end of Mukhtar Ansari marks a significant decline in the ‘bahubali’ culture that had come to define eastern UP, a region afflicted by underdevelopment and poverty for decades. For these precise reasons, it was a fertile ground for the youth to get attracted to gun-wielding dons or ‘bahubalis’ whose writ ran in these lawless parts.

Political impact

A BJP leader from eastern UP said Ansari’s death marks the end of ‘Goonda Raj’ that was flourishing mainly in districts of Mau, Azamgarh, Ghazipur and to a certain extent in adjoining Varanasi before Yogi Adityanath became Chief Minister.

It will also have a political impact, given that it is expected to help the BJP polarise voters in the Ghazipur Lok Sabha seat, where Mukthar’s brother Afzal Ansari, who is a sitting BSP MP from the same seat, is trying his luck again, but on the Samajwadi Party ticket.

The BJP leader also stated that the incident would add to CM Yogi’s campaign of a crime-free Uttar Pradesh. As per the state government statistics early last year, the police had said they nabbed 5,967 criminals in 10,713 encounters carried out in the six years of the Yogi government.

Ansari belonged to an illustrious family. His grandfather, MA Ansari, was not just a freedom fighter and a Congress leader but also one of the founders of Jamia Millia University in Delhi. Such was his standing that the Ansari Road and Ansari Nagar in Delhi owe its name to Mukhtar’s grandfather.

His family’s grandstanding was also because his maternal grandfather, Brigadier Mohammad Usman, was a top-ranking official in Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army that fought against the Britishers during the freedom struggle. A distant relative of his is former Vice President of India, Hamid Ansari.

He, however, took to crime at an early age to become one of the most dreaded mafia dons, facing 63 cases of extortion, murder, and land grabbing. When he was hardly 15, he was booked for criminal intimidation in 1978. A decade later, he was booked for murder. He was languishing in Banda jail after conviction in the murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai in 2005.

He is one of the original gangsters of eastern UP who along with his arch rivals, Brajesh Singh, Atiq Ahmed, and Ramakant Yadav, brought a mafia culture to the state.

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