A chief judicial magistrate’s court in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda on Friday ordered a judicial inquiry into the death of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari. This comes as Ansari’s son wrote to the District Magistrate that the postmortem examination be carried out by the doctors of AIIMS, Delhi.
The investigation team will be headed by Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (MP-MLA Court Banda) Garima Singh, said the order issued by Banda Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Bhagwan Das Gupta. The CJM has sought the probe report within a month. As for the postmortem examination, a panel of two doctors will do the post-mortem, which will be videographed.
Earlier the day, Ansari’s son had demanded that the postmortem procedures be carried out by doctors at AIIMS, Delhi. “It (post-mortem) is their procedure. I have written a letter saying that it should be done by doctors at AIIMS Delhi. We don’t trust the medical system, government and administration here. You know why I am saying this…Panchnama is done. District Magistrate has to make a decision. Let’s see what he decides. The postmortem has not begun,” he said.
“We hope that the court will help investigate the suspicions that we are expressing. We will consult our legal team. We are confident that this is not a natural death but an orchestrated murder,” he added.
Ansari, 63, was brought to the Rani Durgavati Medical College in Banda from the district jail in “an unconscious state” on Thursday evening and died at the hospital following a cardiac arrest. His family alleges that Ansari was poisoned in the jail.
Security arrangements have been beefed up in Uttar Pradesh after the death of Mukhtar Ansari, who suffered a cardiac arrest on Thursday night. Police conducted a flag march in the affected areas, and an alert has also been issued in the entire state, said IG Aligarh Range Shalabh Mathur. On Tuesday, he was admitted to a hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda after he complained of abdominal pain.
He was then shifted to Uttar Pradesh’s Rani Durgawati Medical College after his discharge. Ansari was elected as an MLA from the Mau assembly seat five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. He had a strong influence in Ghazipur, his hometown.
In April 2023, Mukhtar Ansari was convicted and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai by an MP MLA court. He was sentenced to life in prison on March 13, 2024, in a case related to the use of forged documents for obtaining an arms licence in 1990.
Before this, in December 2023, the MP/MLA Court of Varanasi had found Mukhtar Ansari guilty of threatening Mahavir Prasad Rungta, a witness in the murder of 26-year-old coal businessman Nand Kishor Rungta, and had sentenced him to five and a half years of rigorous imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 against him.
Ansari’s brother, Afzal Ansari, who is also the Ghazipur MP, alleged that his brother was given slow poison in jail. “Mukhtar said that he was given a poisonous substance in food in jail. This happened for the second time. Around 40 days ago also he was given poison. And recently, he was again given this (poison) due to which his condition is bad,” Afzal Ansari had said.
