An MP/MLA special court in Varanasi on Wednesday sentenced gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari to life imprisonment in a more than three-decades-old fake arms licence case. On March 12, the court convicted Mr. Ansari under Sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy), 428 (mischief), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 30 of the Arms Act.
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In June 1987, Mr. Ansari, a five-term former MLA, applied for the licence of a double-barrel gun in Ghazipur. The Uttar Pradesh administration found that the arms licence was obtained with fake signatures of the Ghazipur District Magistrate. The State CID filed a complaint at the Mohadabad police station, Ghazipur, alleging fraud against five persons, including Mr. Ansari.
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It is the seventh case in the last 18 months in which Mr. Ansari has been convicted by the courts. In June 2023, an MP/MLA court sentenced the former MLA to life imprisonment in the murder of Awadhesh Rai, brother of Uttar Pradesh Congress president Ajay Rai. Earlier, in April 2023, the former MLA was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment in connection with the cases of the kidnapping of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Nand Kishore Rungta and the 2005 murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai, respectively.
“Considering Mukhtar Ansari as a mafia, the Uttar Pradesh police headquarters and the State government are continuously persuading cases against him. Due to which, the accused has been convicted in seven cases,” reads a statement issued by the police.
Mr. Ansari, 61, who is facing more than five dozen cases, is languishing in jail since 2005, and wields influence in the Ghazipur-Mau-Varanasi region of eastern Uttar Pradesh allegedly through a criminal syndicate and been involved in rivalry with other strongmen of the regions.