Mukhtar Ansari’s death: Section-144 imposed, post-mortem today

The Uttar Pradesh government has announced a magisterial investigation into the death of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, reported news agency ANI. The magisterial investigation will be carried out by a three-member team.

A panel of two doctors will conduct the post-mortem on Friday which will be videographed. Mukhtar Ansari’s body will be handed over to his son, Umar Ansari, after the post-mortem.

Mukhtar Ansari died of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda on Thursday.

According to a medical bulletin, Mukhtar Ansari was brought to the Rani Durgavati Medical College in the city from the district jail in “an unconscious state” after he had complained of vomiting. A team of nine doctors attended to him but he died of cardiac arrest, it stated.

Earlier, Mukhtar Ansari was hospitalised for around 14 hours on Tuesday after he complained of abdominal pain. The gangster-turned-politician’s family has alleged that the 63-year-old was being “slow-poisoned” by a substance mixed in food given to him in the Banda jail.

Mukhtar Ansari’s death: Here are latest updates

Following Mukhtar Ansari’s death, security has been tightened across Uttar Pradesh.

Prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which bars large gatherings, have been imposed across the state and additional security personnel have been deployed in the Banda, Mau, Ghazipur and Varanasi districts, according to PTI.

UP DGP Prashant Kumar said the social media cell of the Uttar Pradesh Police has also been activated to keep a close watch on unlawful elements online.

However, despite the prohibitory orders, a large number of people were seen outside Mukhtar Ansari’s residence in Ghazipur on Friday morning.

Preparations for the funeral of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari are underway at the Kali Bagh Graveyard in Ghazipur.

Mukhtar Ansari’s son, Abbas Ansari, who is locked in Kasganj jail, has been informed about his father’s death.

Superintendent of the jail, Vijay Vikram Singh informed him about it, ANI reported

Umar Ansari, Mukhtar Ansari’s another son, claimed that his father was given poison in the food and said they would move the court. “We have full faith in it,” he added.

Who was Mukhtar Ansari?

Mukhtar Ansari, 63, was a five-time MLA from Mau Sadar – from 1996 to 2022 – twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate, twice as an Independent and once as a Quami Ekta Dal nominee.

He had been behind bars in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab since 2005. He had more than 60 criminal cases pending against him.

Mukhtar Ansari was sentenced in eight cases since September 2022 by different courts in Uttar Pradesh and was lodged in the Banda jail. His name was on the list of 66 gangsters issued by Uttar Pradesh Police last year.

In 2022, Mukhtar Ansari passed on the baton to his elder son Abbas Ansari, who won from the same assembly seat as a candidate of the Suheldev Bhartiya Samaj Party in 2022, which was then in an alliance with the Samajwadi Party.