Muslim leader, ex- MLA Mukhtar Ansari dies in Indian jail; Section 144 imposed in UP
Lucknow: Three months after his lawyers moved the Indian Supreme Court about the possibility that he may be eliminated in custody, jailed Muslim leader and former MLA Mukhtar Ansari died in a jail in Uttar Pradesh state.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Mukhtar Ansari, 63, died on Thursday after he was rushed to a hospital from Banda jail in Uttar Pradesh, officials claimed.
UP Director General of Police Prashant Kumar said prohibitory orders under section 144 were imposed across the state following Ansari’s death. Additional deployment of police personnel has also been made in Banda, Mau, Ghazipur and Varanasi districts, he added. “Teams of Central Reserve Police Force have been deployed along with local police in these districts,” the DGP said.
Government doctors said Ansari had fallen unconscious but two days before his death, his brother Afzal Ansari, a former Member of Parliament and Samajwadi Party candidate from Ghazipur in 2024, publicly said that he was being poisoned in jail as part of a conspiracy to murder him.
In December 2023, Mukhtar’s younger son, Umar Ansari, had approached the Supreme Court apprehending that the UP government was planning to assassinate him in Banda jail.
Ansari fainted in his cell and was taken to the Rani Durgavati Medical College on Thursday evening, after vomiting and losing consciousness, said a medical bulletin of the hospital. He was taken to the emergency ward where a team of doctors immediately treated him but despite best efforts, he died due to cardiac arrest, claimed the bulletin.
Earlier, on Tuesday, Afzal Ansari had said that his brother was fed food mixed with a poisonous substance. “There is a conspiracy to murder him in jail,” Afzal told reporters. He said his brother’s health was fast deteriorating and he was even unable to even attend the virtual hearings in his case for the past few days.
Mukhtar’s son Umar Ansari had filed a writ petition in the SC last December praying that his father be moved to a jail outside UP. In his petition, Umar Ansari had expressed concern for his father’s well-being by drawing attention to the murder of former Lok Sabha MP Atiq Ahmad and his brother Ashraf Ahmad while they were being escorted by a team of policemen for a routine medical check-up in Prayagraj on April 15, last year. The Ahmad brothers were killed in front of reporters and the footage was relayed live on television.
A five-time former MLA from Mau in eastern UP, Mukhtar was under the radar of the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, which after coming to power in 2017 unleashed the police and the force of the administration against him, his family and supporters. The state government claimed that Mukhtar was a “gangster”, and lodged numerous false cases against him, his sons, his brother Afzal Ansari and other associates. The government has seized and demolished property worth crores belonging to the Ansari family.
Meanwhile, today morning, people had gathered at the Mukhtar Ansari’s residence. “We don’t have any information about when the post-mortem will be done. We were hoping that the post-mortem would be done in the night itself and the body would be handed over to us in the morning. I don’t understand why the administration is delaying it,” Sibgatullah Ansari, Mukhtar Ansari’s elder brother, told reporters. When asked about the charges of slow poisoning levelled by Umar Ansari, he said, “…Mukhtar Ansari had informed the court through his lawyers in writing that these things are happening.”
