Who is giving patronage to Mukhtar Ansari? Who is gunning for him, and why?

Arguing in the Supreme Court, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi termed him “a small fry”. However, anyone who knows even a little about don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari and his deadly gang war in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh (UP), is aware that the name is enough to send a chill down the spine of many politicians, bureaucrats, police officers and, especially, businessmen. Ansari, an MLA from UP’s Mau Sadar, is currently lodged in the Ropar Jail of Punjab in connection with an extortion case. The Punjab and UP Governments are at loggerheads for his custody, with the former trying every trick up its sleeve to keep him from the UP Police’s hands on health grounds. A natural question to ask would be as to what makes a dreaded criminal so important that UP’s BJP-led Government and Punjab’s Congress Government are fighting over his custody in the Supreme Court. Well, there is nothing new in Ansari’s name being associated with heinous crimes like murder, extortion and kidnapping, but what actually has pitted him against the saffron party is the chilling murder of then BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai in 2005, who and six associates were gunned down by assailants armed with AK-47 rifles. The murder was more than sensational as 400 rounds were fired. Ansari, the main accused, was acquitted by the CBI court in 2019.

Recently, the BJP’s Mohammadabad MLA Alka Rai, the slain MLA’s widow, wrote to Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra accusing the party Governments in Punjab and Rajasthan of shielding Ansari. However, the story is not as simple as it appears. The UP Police has of late become “trigger-happy” and several criminals have been gunned down in encounters that the Opposition terms “extra-judicial killings”. Last year, wanted criminal Vikas Dubey was shot by the State police after the vehicle carrying him “overturned” on a highway and Dubey “tried to escape after snatching a gun” from a policeman. There is no denying that Ansari must be fearful of meeting the same fate if Punjab jail authorities hand him over to the UP Police. But there is another side to the story: The criminal-politician-bureaucrat-police nexus is nothing new and Ansari must have been part of many such connections at the interstate and intrastate level, and it is only in the interest of such corrupt elements to exterminate the voices that can reveal their dark secrets. Now, who is giving patronage to Ansari and who is out to get him, and why, is the moot question.