The BJP on Friday hit back at Opposition parties for criticising the Uttar Pradesh Government over the death of jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, saying they have the habit of emotionally exploiting every issue to vitiating communal harmony.
While former Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi targeted Opposition parties, Alka Rai, a BJP leader and the wife of MLA Krishnanand Rai who was killed at the behest of Ansari, described his death as “divine justice”. “I always had full faith in God,” she said.
Her son Piyush Rai rejected the suggestion from some opposition parties, including the state’s main opposition Samajwadi Party, that there was a conspiracy behind Ansari’s death. It is a wrong allegation levelled due to politics of appeasement, he said.
“They (critics) are looking for religion in a criminal,” he said. His mother said victims of Ansari’s crime and their families will be happy at his end.
Alka Rai had been elected to the Uttar Pradesh assembly on the BJP ticket in the past.
The BJP is yet to name its candidate for the Ghazipur Lok Sabha constituency which is currently represented by Ansari’s brother Afzal Ansari.
Naqvi, in his reaction, accused opposition parties of spreading “communal poison” despite the state administration’s statement on his death.
In a reference to the criminal past of Mukhtar Ansari, who had been an MLA for several terms, he said his history cannot be ignored.
The region he came from used to be a citadel of the Left but turned into a hotbed of criminals, he said.
Ansari, who was convicted in several cases, died of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Banda in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.
He was brought to the Rani Durgavati Medical College in Banda from the district jail in “an unconscious state” and, according to its principal Suneel Kaushal, he died at the hospital following cardiac arrest.
Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav said the court should take cognisance of Ansari’s death in “suspicious” circumstances.
BSP supremo Mayawati said the allegations of Ansari’s family regarding his death require a high-level probe to bring out the facts.
