A Ghazipur court on Saturday sentenced gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari's brother Afzal Ansari to four years in prison in the Krishnanad Rai kidnapping and murder case. The court has also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh on Ansari. With the conviction, Ansari, who is a BSP MP from Ghazipour, is all set to lose his Lok Sabha membership. This comes after the same court convicted Mukhtar Ansari sentencing him to 10 years imprisonment in the same case. The court imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on him.
Earlier, the security in Uttar Pradeh's Ghazipur was beefed up ahead of the verdict in a kidnapping and murder case against Mukhtar Ansari and his elder brother and BSP MP from the city Afzal Ansari.
The wife of Krishnanand Rai told reporters ahead of the verdict earlier in the day that she has full faith in the judiciary. Notably, both Mukhtar and Afzal are accused in the 2005 kidnapping-murder case of Krishnanand Rai.
The Allahabad High Court in March this year had denied bail to a member of the Mukhtar Ansari gang in a 2010 murder case in Mau district in which the jailed gangster-turned-politician is also an accused.
The court said Ansari's gang is the "most dreaded criminal gang of India" and it is possible that the accused, Ramu Mallah, could influence witnesses and their deposition in the case if allowed to come out of jail. Mallah, who is being tried in several other cases, had moved the bail application under Section 439 of the CrPC, which empowers the court to grant bail and also impose conditions on the accused if necessary.
Opposing the bail application, the government counsel Ratnendu Kumar Singh said the accused could influence witnesses and secure acquittal in the present case. To this, the court agreed. "Merely since the accused has been acquitted as the witnesses have turned hostile in some (other) cases, his criminal history does not get evaporated,” Justice Dinesh Kumar Singh observed in his order on March 1.