Mukhtar Ansari awarded life imprisonment in 1991 Awadhesh Rai murder case

Government counsel (Varanasi) Vinay Singh said, “On Monday morning, a local court of Varanasi held Mukhtar Ansari guilty in the murder case of Awadhesh Singh. Later, in the day the court sentenced him to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 1.2 lakh.”

He added that six prosecution witnesses, including two eye-witnesses Ajay Rai and Vijay Pandey, were examined by the court in the case, besides six defence witnesses.

According to the prosecution, on August 3, 1991, Rai was standing outside his house in Varanasi’s Chetganj police station area when the assailants arrived in a car. They emerged from the vehicle and opened fire at him before escaping in the same vehicle. Ajay Rai and Pandey, who were present at the spot, rushed the victim to a hospital where doctors declared him dead.

An FIR was lodged against five persons, including Mukhtar Ansari, Abdul Kalam, Bheem Singh, Kamlesh Singh and Rakesh Kumar Srivastava, at Chetganj police station. Ajay Rai, the complainant, claimed to have witnessed Mukhtar Ansari and his associates firing at the victim, the counsel said.

“During police investigation, it came to light that the murder was a fallout of a dispute over supremacy in Varanasi,” said Alok Chandra, another government counsel.

A few months later, the investigation into the case was transferred to the Uttar Pradesh Police’s Crime Branch (CID). Following serial blasts by alleged terrorists at Varanasi court in 2007, the trial in the murder case was transferred to Prayagraj on the direction of the Allahabad High Court. Later, Ansari’s file was transferred to Varanasi after an MP-MLA court was constituted. The government counsel said that the accused Kamlesh and Abdul Kalam died during trial. “The trial of Bheem Singh and Rakesh Srivastava is pending in a Prayagraj court,” he added. Bheem Singh is in jail while Rakesh is out on bail.

Ansari has been convicted in four cases so far. On April 29 this year, he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment under the Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act along with his elder brother Afzal. Earlier, on September 21, 2022, the high court sentenced him to seven years in prison in a 2003 case of assault on a jailer. A day later, the high court sentenced him to five years’ jail in a 1999 case under the Gangsters Act. Then on December 15, a Ghazipur district court sentenced Mukhtar and his alleged associate Bheem Singh to 10 years’ imprisonment in a 1996 case under the Gangsters Act.