NEW DELHI: Jailed mafia don
Mukhtar Ansari
passed away on Thursday.
He was admitted to
Banda Medical College
earlier today after he was found lying unconscious in his barrack. The jail officials immediately spotted him and took him to the district hospital.
Sources in Banda jail said that
Mukhtar
Ansari suffered a heart attack and was taken to the hospital.
On Tuesday morning Mukhtar was found unconscious and was referred to the district hospital. He had complained of pain in the abdomen and constipation. He was discharged after treatment in 15 hours.
Last week after Mukhtar’s lawyer Randheer Singh Suman had moved an application before a court in Barabanki seeking proper medical examination alleging that ‘slow poisoning’ was being administered to him by Banda prison staff where he was presently lodged. Ansari has faced convictions in eight cases within a mere 18-month span.
On March 13, Ansari received a life sentence in a legal matter concerning the acquisition of an arms license using counterfeit documentation in 1990. This marked the eighth occasion in the last two years that the courts in Uttar Pradesh have found the former MLA guilty and imposed a sentence on him.
Additionally, in December 2023, the MP/MLA Court in Varanasi convicted Ansari for intimidating Mahavir Prasad Rungta, a key witness in the murder case of 26-year-old coal merchant Nand Kishor Rungta. Consequently, Ansari was sentenced to five and a half years of rigorous imprisonment along with a fine of Rs 10,000.
Further intensifying his legal troubles, on October 15 of the previous year, the Enforcement Directorate took action against Ansari as part of a money laundering probe. Assets including land, a building, and bank deposits totaling over Rs 73.43 lakh were attached by the agency.
Ansari had been elected as an MLA from the Mau constituency five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. He last contested the assembly polls in 2017.
