A news clipping posted by a senior IPS officer on the official media group of UP Police on Tuesday and acquittal of don-turned-politico Mukhtar Ansari in the sensational killing of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai a day later has put a question mark over law enforcing agencies and the manner in which the Prosecution department pursued the case in the court.
The clipping also pointed to privileges enjoyed by Ansari even inside the jail and sought to know how a ganglord who once conspired to eliminate then Gorakhpur MP and now UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath remained to be punished for his alleged crimes.
Ansari was convicted for 10 years in the kidnapping and murder of Vishwa Hindu Parishad national treasurer Nand Kishore Rungta by a TADA court but was later acquitted by the Supreme Court.
As per the clipping, Ansari instigated some Muslims to eliminate Yogi Adityanath in 2003 but he went scot free. It was also alleged that the high-profile politico masterminded Mau communal clashes in which a dozen persons were killed in 2004, but again he was acquitted.
During Kalyan Singh’s regime as Chief Minister, officials of Special Task Force had apprehended that slain don from Gorakhpur, Shree Prakash Shukla, had taken ‘supari’ to bump off Yogi, after which the STF eliminated Shukla in an encounter.
Relating to the conspiracy to kill Kalyan Singh and subsequent slaying of mastermind Shree Prakash Shukla, the clipping highlighted how Ansari conspired to eliminate Yogi but continued to run his illegal empire from jail with elan.
On Wednesday, Special Judge Arun Bhardwaj of a Delhi court acquitted Mukhtar Ansari, his brother Afzal Ansari, Sanjeev Maheshwari, Ejajul Haq, Munna Bajrangi (now dead), Rakesh Pandey, Ram Mallah and Mansoor Ansari, accused in the 2005 murder of BJP legislator Krishnanand Rai.
Rai was sprayed with bullets along with six others on November 29, 2005 while returning after inaugurating a cricket match in Ghazipur.
The trial of the murder was transferred from Ghazipur (UP) to Delhi by the Supreme Court in 2013 on a plea filed by the slain legislator’s wife Alka Rai.
