The Ansari family of Ghazipur in Poorvanchal is a study in contrasts. There's Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, the medical practitioner-turned-freedom fighter and educationist, who was an early president of the Indian National Congress. There's also his grand-nephew Mohammad Hamid Ansari, a civil servant, scholar and former Vice-President of India. Then there is the good doctor's grandson Mukhtar Ansari (62), and his family of gangster-politicians. In jail since October 2005 after he surrendered to the police in a 2005 case of communal riot in Mau, in which seven people were killed, Mukhtar is alleged to be running his gangland operations from inside jail for the past 18 years. By the time he was sent to jail, he had already been elected MLA of Mau Sadar twice, once on a BSP ticket (1996) and once as an Independent (2002). He has continued to get elected MLA from Mau Sadar while in jail – in 2007 as an Independent, in 2012 on a ticket of the Qaumi Ekta Dal (QED) that he founded with his elder brother Afzal, before returning to the BSP, and winning in 2017 on its ticket. In 2022, Mukhtar stepped aside to field elder son Abbas from the seat, and the latter won. UP Police records show there are 97 cases lodged against Mukhtar and his family, including 61 against him alone. Twelve of these have been lodged since 2019 and include one case of murder and four under the UP Gangsters and Anti Social Activities (Prevention) Act. His elder brother Afzal Ansari (68) — the BSP MP from Ghazipur who now stands disqualified by the House, and is reportedly the brains in the family — had seven cases against his name, on four of which he got clean chit from courts and the police. His disqualification as an MP followed his conviction in a case under the Gangsters Act on April 29, in which Mukhtar too was held guilty. Another elder brother of Mukhtar, Sibgatullah Ansari (71), has three cases against his name. The cases against Afzal and Sibgatullah all date back to before 2019. There also are 11 cases against Mukhtar's wife Afsha, eight against their older son Abbas Ansari (30), one against Abbas's wife Nikhat Bano, six against Mukhtar's younger son Umar (25) — all of which were registered since 2019. Brothers Umar and Abbas are both accused in a few of these cases. Abbas is lodged in jail in a money laundering case while Umar is on the run in a hate speech case. Besides Mukhtar, Abbas's wife Nikhat and both of Mukhtar's brother-in-laws — Atif Raza alias Sharjil Raza and Anwar Shahzad — are also in jail, the latter in judicial custody. Given Mukhtar's conviction now in four cases, and Afzal's recent one, the noose appears to be tightening around the Ansari family, which has been under relentless pressure since the BJP came to power in the state in 2017, and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath declared a campaign against gangsters in the state. The Ansaris are believed to be second on the Adityanath government's list, after Atiq Ahmed and his family – whose operations now stand virtually disbanded, after Atiq, his brother and his son got killed. Since 2017, the BJP government claims to have seized and demolished properties worth around Rs 575 crore belonging to Ansari, his relatives and associates. The government also demolished a hotel owned by the family in Ghazipur district, citing irregularities in construction. Mukhtar Ansari Although the youngest of three brothers, Mukhtar Ansari is the de-facto patriarch of the family-run criminal empire. Since his imprisonment 18 years ago, he has been booked in 22 cases. These include seven cases under the UP Gangsters' Act and six cases of murder, with the latest case lodged in January, in which he was booked along with four associates in the murder of 28-year-old Manoj Rai in Ghazipur in 2001. Mukhtar plunged into organised crime in the early '90s, as part of one of the several gangs competing to grab contracts for a slew of high-value government projects, as well as running extortion and protection rackets. Soon, he had launched his own gang. By the mid-'90s, Mukhtar had decided to take the plunge in elections. Till 2017, he went on to win five Assembly elections on the trot from Mau, three of which were while he was in jail. He was transferred to Ropar jail in January 2019, in connection with a case of extortion and criminal intimidation lodged in Punjab. By 2021, he was back in the limelight, when Punjab turned down a request to turn him over to UP, citing medical reports. In response, the UP government alleged that the Punjab government was “shamelessly protecting” Ansari, and moved the Supreme Court, seeking his custody. In April 2021, the SC directed Punjab to hand Ansari over to UP, following which he was brought back and is now lodged at Banda district jail. Since then, different courts in UP have quickly convicted Mukhtar in four cases, the latest of which was with Afzal on April 29. Earlier, on September 21, 2022, the UP 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 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, in a 1996 case under the Gangsters' Act. Afzal Ansari, elder brother On April 29, a special court in Ghazipur sentenced BSP MP Afzal Ansari and his brother Mukhtar Ansari to four years imprisonment in a Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act case from 2007. Afzal, who was out on bail, was taken into custody and sent to jail. It was the first case in which Afzal Ansari has been convicted, following which, his Lok Sabha membership was quickly rescinded. In his four decade-long political career, Ansari has won five Assembly and two Lok Sabha elections, but faced the limelight only when the issue of his brother Mukhtar was raised by the government, police or media. “We have never seen Afzal Ansari involved in criminal activities or harassing people. In a few criminal cases, he has been made co-accused with Mukhtar. Because of his knowledge of law and politics, Afzal is believed to be the "brains" in the family, planning all its moves, be it regarding poll campaigns or fighting legal battles," said a local in Ghazipur. Afzal's political career began in 1985 when he contested the Assembly elections from his home town Mohammadabad on a Communist Party of India (CPI) ticket. He won the Assembly seat thrice in a row on a CPI ticket. In 1996, he contested on a SP ticket, defeating BSP’s Virendra. In the 2002 Assembly elections, contesting on a SP ticket, Afzal lost to BJP’s Krishnanand Rai. Three years later, on November 29, 2005 Krishnanand Rai was murdered in Ghazipur along with six associates. Afzal and Mukhtar were prime accused in the case, though in 2019, a special CBI court in Delhi acquitted Afzal, Mukhtar and five others in the case. An appeal against the judgment is pending in the Delhi High Court. Meanwhile, he had won the Ghazipur Lok Sabha seat in 2004. Since Rai's murder, though, Afzal lost Lok Sabha polls in 2009 and 2014. He won it back in 2019 on a BSP ticket. In between 2005 and 2007, Afzal was booked in three murder cases and one case of UP Gangsters' Act. It was later established that in one murder case, he had been wrongly named. In the second case, of Krishnanand Rai, the court acquitted him. The third case, too, was expunged, after it was found that the allegation against Afzal was false. Afsha Ansari, wife Afsha has been on the run for over a year, ever since the UP Police declared a reward of Rs 75,000 on her head in the context of two cases (out of 11) against her name - one under the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters Act lodged in Ghazipur district, the other under Anti Social Activities (Prevention) Act – both lodged in Mau district. Last week, the state police wrote a letter to the CBI and the Immigration authorities seeking a lookout notice against her over the nine cases registered against her name. Since then, the police have been conducting raids to trace her. Abbas Ansari, elder son Abbas came into the spotlight after Mukhtar stepped aside during the 2022 Assembly elections to field him from Mau Sadar on the ticket of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP), which had allied with the SP for the polls. During the poll campaign itself, Abbas, his younger brother Umar, and 150 other “unknown persons” were booked for criminal intimidation, after they allegedly violated the Model Code of Conduct, following the emergence of a video showing Abbas purportedly threatening government officials during an election meeting. Abbas defeated the BJP's Ashok Kumar Singh in the election. But since November last year, the MLA has been lodged in jail after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested him in connection with a money laundering case, allegedly for not cooperating with their investigation and for not giving replies to specific questions made by the investigating officials. Nikhat Bano, daughter-in-law Mukhtar's daughter-in-law Nikhat Bano was arrested on February 10 after the police allegedly recovered two cellphones from her while she was visiting Chitrakoot jail to meet her husband Abbas. The police alleged Abbas was using Nikhat Bano’s cellphones to run criminal activities from the jail. Bano is also accused of attempting to destroy data from her cellphone before the police could seize it. The district administration and police conducted a surprise inspection and caught Bano inside a room next to the jail superintendent’s office. The police also claimed she had entered the jail premises without completing the visitor’s formalities. A case was lodged against Abbas, Nikhat, her driver, the then jail superintendent Ashok Kumar Sagar, jail warden Jagmohan Singh and other unidentified jail employees, and Nikhat was arrested along with her driver, Niyaz. Nikhat is also accused of threatening officials with “dire consequences” when asked to reveal her cellphone’s password. The police also claimed that Nikhat told them during questioning that Abbas was giving instructions to put pressure on witnesses to turn hostile. After Nikhat's arrest, police shifted Abbas to Kasganj jail, and also arrested then Chitrakoot jail super Ashok Kumar Sagar, the then jailor Santosh Kumar, his deputy Chandra Kala and the then warden Jagmohan Singh for allegedly taking bribes to provide “undue facilities” to Abbas inside jail. Sibghatullah Ansari, eldest brother Mukhtar's oldest brother, Sibgatullah, also a two-time MLA from Mohammadabad had three cases against his name, the first of which was lodged in 1990, with two others in 1996. Two of them involved attempts to murder, the third was under the Arms Act. In two of the cases - one under the Arms Act, the other an attempt to murder – the police have filed closure reports. In a third, the courts have acquitted Sibgatullah, leaving no case pending against his name. Atif Raza alias Sharjil Raza & Anwar Shahzad, brothers-in-law Mukhtar's brothers-in-law, the two stand accused along with their sister Afsha in a case under the UP Gangsters Act, lodged at Dakshin Tola police station in Mau. They are also accused of illegally building a godown on land belonging to a Scheduled Caste villager at Raini. In November 2022, soon after Atif Raza was granted bail and released from jail in a separate case, the ED arrested Raza in a money laundering case in which Mukhtar and Abbas are also accused. The ED claims they had summoned Raza several times before, when he was out of jail, to get his statement recorded. The agency arrested him after Raza failed to give specific replies to its questions, said ED officials. Ghazipur SP Omvir Singh said Atif and Anwar have four cases each against their name. Anwar is lodged at Ghazipur jail for six months in a case of cheating, he added. The others The story of the Ansari family though doesn't end here. Mukhtar’s nephew Suhaib Ansari, alias Mannu, won the 2022 Assembly election from Mohammadabad in Ghazipur on an SP ticket, defeating Alka Rai of the BJP. With Afzal disqualified and Abbas in jail, Suhaib remains the only lawmaker in the family on paper still capable of pulling strings from within the corridors of power in the state.
