In prison since 2005, Mukhtar Ansari faced 65 criminal cases, was convicted in 8 so far

The first conviction took place in September 2022, when the Allahabad High Court overturned a trial court’s order acquitting him and sentenced Mukhtar Ansari to seven years of imprisonment in a 19-year-old case where he was found guilty of threatening and pointing a revolver at the Lucknow district jailer where he was lodged in 2003. Ansari was also fined Rs 37,000.

The latest case in which Mukhtar Ansari was convicted was related to the use of forged documents to obtain an arms licence in 1990. A Varanasi court, earlier this month, sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Among the prominent cases against Mukhtar Ansari were the murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai and six others that took place in the Bhawarkol area of Ghazipur district in November 2005. Mukhtar Ansari was booked along with his brother Afzal and five others.

On the direction of the High Court, the case was investigated by the CBI. In 2019, a special CBI court in Delhi acquitted Afzal, Mukhtar Ansari, and five others in the murder case. Rai’s son filed an appeal against the acquittal, which is pending in the Delhi High Court.

In June last year, a court in Varanasi sentenced Mukhtar Ansari to life imprisonment for the murder of local politician Awadhesh Rai in 1991. Awadhesh Rai, 30, a businessman, was the elder brother of Congress state president Ajay Rai.

In December last year, Mukhtar Ansari was sentenced to five years and six months in jail by a Varanasi court in a 26-year-old case for threatening a businessman, Mahavir Prasad Rungta, who was a witness in the murder case of his brother and coal trader Nand Kishore Rungta.

Mukhtar Ansari is also an accused in the kidnapping and murder of coal tycoon Nand Kishore Rungta alias Nandu Babu in Varanasi in January 1997. The trial is still pending.

Two years ago, Mukhtar Ansari was booked for allegedly using fake documents to register an ambulance that was used to ferry him from the jail to a court in Mohali in Punjab where he was lodged.

The UP Police registered the case after it came to light that the vehicle used to ferry Mukhtar Ansari carried the registration number of Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh.

In the preliminary probe, police found that documents such as voter ID cards and PAN cards submitted for the registration of the ambulance were fake. A case was lodged in Barabanki against Mukhtar Ansari and his associates on April 2, 2022. The police have filed a chargesheet against him in the case.

Mukhtar Ansari was in Ropar jail for over two years, from January 2019 to April 2021, under the Amarinder Singh-led Congress government. He was brought to Punjab on a transit remand after an extortion call was made to a Mohali-based realtor, reportedly for Rs 10 crore, from the Banda jail in Uttar Pradesh, where Ansari was lodged at the time.

In April 2021, after the UP Police moved the Supreme Court stating that Punjab was “shamelessly” retaining Ansari, he was finally shifted back to Banda jail.