Mukhtar Ansari

Mukhtar Ansari (born 30 June 1963) is a convicted Indian gangster and politician from Uttar Pradesh.

He has been elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Mau constituency five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate.

He is the relative of former Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari.

Mukhtar Ansari paternal grandfather was Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, an early president of the Indian National Congress.

Mukhtar Ansari's maternal grandfather was Mohammad Usman.

Mohammad Usman was a Brigadier in the Indian Army, he never married and remained bachelor all his life.

Mukhtar Ansari's Paternal lineage goes to the sufi saint of Herat Abdullah Ansari.

In the early 1970s, the government commissioned several development projects in the Poorvanchal area.

This resulted in the rise of organised gangs that competed with each other to grab the contracts for these projects.

Mukhtar Ansari was originally an alleged member of the Makhanu Singh gang.

In the 1980s, this gang clashed with another gang led by Sahib Singh, over a plot of land in Saidpur, resulting in a series of violent incidents.

Brijesh Singh, an alleged member of Sahib Singh's gang, later formed his own gang and took over Ghazipur's contract work mafia in the 1990s.

Ansari's gang competed with him for the control of the ₹ 100 crore contract business, which spanned areas such as coal mining, railway construction, scrap disposal, public works, and liquor business.

The gangs were also allegedly involved in running protection ("goonda tax") and extortion rackets, besides other criminal activities such as kidnapping.

By the early 1990s, Mukhtar Ansari was well known for his alleged criminal activities, especially in the districts of Mau, Ghazipur, Varanasi and Jaunpur.

He entered politics around 1995 through student union in Banaras Hindu University, became an MLA in 1996, and started challenging Brijesh Singh's dominance.

The two became the main gang rivals in the Poorvanchal region.

In 2002, Singh allegedly ambushed Ansari's convoy.

Three of Ansari's men were killed in the resulting shootout.

Brijesh Singh was critically injured and presumed dead.

Ansari became the undisputed gang leader in Poorvanchal.

However, Brijesh Singh was later found to be alive, and the feud resumed.

To counter Ansari's political influence, Singh supported the election campaign of the BJP leader Krishnanand Rai.

Rai defeated Mukhtar Ansari's brother and five-time MLA Afzal Ansari from the Mohammadabad in the 2002 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

Mukhtar Ansari later claimed that Rai used his political office to award all the contracts to Brijesh singh's gang, and the two planned to eliminate him.

Mukhtar Ansari capitalized on the Muslim votebank to secure his electoral triumph during the Ghazipur-Mau area elections.

The amalgamation of crime, politics, and religion instigated several outbreaks of communal violence within the region.

Consequently, Ansari faced charges of inciting violence following one such riot.

Notwithstanding, he was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the court.

While Ansari was lodged in the jail, Krishnanand Rai was shot dead in public along with his six aides.

The attackers fired over 400 bullets from six AK-47 rifles; 67 bullets were recovered from the seven bodies with the help of Ramashrey Giri.

Shashikant Rai, an important witness in the case, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 2006.

He had identified Ansari and Bajrangi's shooters Angad Rai and Gora Rai as the two of the gunmen who attacked Rai's convoy.

The police dismissed his death as a suicide.

Ansari's rival Brijesh Singh escaped from the Ghazipur-Mau area after Rai's murder.

He was later arrested in 2008, in Orissa, and later entered politics as a member of the Pragatisheel Manav Samaj Party.

In 2008, Ansari was booked for ordering an attack on Dharmendra Singh, a witness in a murder case.

However, later, the victim submitted an affidavit requesting the proceedings against Ansari to be dropped.

On 27 September 2017, Ansari was acquitted of murder.

On 9 January 2018, Ansari and his wife suffered heart attacks while in a prison.