Lucknow (TIP)– Security personnel in several districts of Uttar Pradesh remained on alert on Friday, March 29, a day after jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari died of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Banda. Prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC have been imposed across the state and teams of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) along with the local police have been deployed in Banda, Mau, Ghazipur and Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police Prashant Kumar said earlier.
People had also started gathering at Mukhtar Ansari’s residence in Ghazipur and there was a large deployment of security personnel around the house.
Officials at the police headquarters here said the postmortem will be conducted at the Banda medical college by a panel of doctors and the procedure will be videographed. The 63-year-old Ansari 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, according to its principal Suneel Kaushal. Family members of Ansari, including his son Umar Ansari, reached Banda early Friday. Umar Ansari alleged that his father was subjected to slow poisoning in jail, a charge denied by authorities.
“My father had told us he was being subjected to ‘slow poison’,” Umar Ansari told reporters and added that the entire country knows about it now.
Umar Ansari said they will take the body to Ghazipur for cremation after the postmortem.
The police has already chalked out a route plan for the safe transit of the body via road from Banda to Ghazipur, a distance of around 380 Km.
Security has also been stepped up in parts of the state in view of Friday prayers.
Mukhtar Ansari was brought to the medical college around 8.25 pm on Thursday in an unconscious state after he had complained of vomiting. A team of nine doctors attended to him but he died of cardiac arrest, the medical bulletin stated.
Afzal Ansari, who is also the Ghazipur MP, alleged that his brother was given slow poison in jail.
Ansari, a five-time MLA from Mau Sadar seat, was behind bars in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab since 2005. He had over 60 criminal cases pending against him.
He was sentenced in eight cases since September 2022 by different courts in Uttar Pradesh and was lodged in the Banda jail. His name was on the list of 66 gangsters issued by Uttar Pradesh Police last year. Ansari, who hailed from Ghazipur, was believed to have a strong influence in the adjoining Mau and Varanasi districts as well.
The Uttar Pradesh government had earlier approached the Supreme Court to bring Ansari back to the state from Ropar jail in Punjab.
In January 2019, Ansari, then a BSP MLA, was lodged in the Ropar jail in connection with an extortion case and remained there for more than two years.
In March 2021, while hearing a plea of the Uttar Pradesh government, the Supreme Court directed the Punjab government to hand over Ansari’s custody to Uttar Pradesh, saying it was being denied on trivial grounds under the guise of medical issues. Source: PTI