Ghazipur (Uttar Pradesh):
Security has been beefed up in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur ahead of the pronouncement of verdict in the kidnapping and murder case against gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, his elder brother and BSP MP Afzal Ansari by the MP-MLA court on Saturday.
Earlier in January this year, the police had registered a murder case against Mukhtar Ansari in connection with the 2001 Usri Chatti gang war incident.
A case was registered against Ansari at PS Mohammadabad in Ghazipur under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Earlier, on January 18, the Allahabad High Court had set aside the March 15 order of the Ghazipur MP/MLA court, allowing Ansari to be kept in a higher-class jail in Banda.
While giving the order, the court had said that the order of the special court was without jurisdiction and gangster, dreaded criminal Bahubali Ansari was not legally entitled to get a higher grade in jail.
Earlier, on December 15 last year, Ansari and his aide Bhim Singh were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by the Ghazipur gangster court in five cases of murder and attempt to murder.
These cases include the murder of constable Raghuvansh Singh and the murderous attack on an additional SP of Ghazipur.
On September 21, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court convicted Mukhtar Ansari and sentenced him in the case of threatening jailer SK Awasthi and brandishing a pistol. The case dates back to 2003 when SK Awasthi, jailer of Lucknow District Jail, lodged an FIR saying that he was threatened to search the people who came to meet Ansari in the jail.
In the case registered under the Gangster Act in 1999, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment on 23 September. In this 23-year-old case, the court had also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Mukhtar.