Mukhtar Ansari (30 June 1963 – 28 March 2024) was a convicted Indian gangster, rowdy element and one of the most controversial politicians from the state of Uttar Pradesh. He was elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Mau constituency five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate.

In office.
October 1996 – March 2022
Preceded by Naseem
Succeeded by Abbas Ansari
Constituency Mau
Personal details
Born 30 June 1963
Ghazipur, Uttar Pradesh, India[1]
Died 28 March 2024 (aged 60)
Banda district, Uttar Pradesh, India
Political party Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (11 February 2022 – 28 March 2024)
Other political
affiliations Quami Ekta Dal
Height 196 cm (6 ft 5 in)
Spouse Afsa Ansari ​(m. 1989)​
Relations Sibgatullah Ansari (brother)
Afzal Ansari (brother)
Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari (grandfather)
Hamid Ansari (Uncle)
Children 2 (including Abbas Ansari)
Parent
Subhanullah Ansari (father)
Residence Uttar Pradesh
Alma mater PG College Ghazipur
Profession Politician

Died: 28 March 2024 (age 60 years), Rani Durgavati Medical College, Tindwara
Party: Bahujan Samaj Party
Spouse: Afsa Ansari (m. 1989)
Children: Abbas Ansari, Umar Ansari
Nephew: Suhaib Ansari
Height: 1.88 m

Background and family
Mukhtar Ansari’s paternal grandfather was Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari, an early president of the Indian National Congress. Mukhtar Ansari’s maternal grandfather was Mohammad Usman, who was a brigadier in the Indian Army; he never married and remained bachelor all his life. Mukhtar Ansari’s paternal lineage goes to the sufi saint of Herat Abdullah Ansari.

Early life
In the early 1970s, the government commissioned several development projects in the Poorvanchal area. This resulted in the rise of organised gangs that competed with each other to grab the contracts for these projects. Mukhtar Ansari was originally an alleged member of the Makhanu Singh gang. In the 1980s, this gang clashed with another gang led by Sahib Singh, over a plot of land in Saidpur, resulting in a series of violent incidents. Brijesh Singh, an alleged member of Sahib Singh’s gang, later formed his own gang and took over Ghazipur’s contract work mafia in the 1990s. Ansari’s gang competed with him for the control of the ₹ 100 crore contract business, which spanned areas such as coal mining, railway construction, scrap disposal, public works, and the liquor business. The gangs were also allegedly involved in running protection (“goonda tax”) and extortion rackets, besides other criminal activities such as kidnapping.

Early political career
By the early 1990s, Mukhtar Ansari was well known for his alleged criminal activities, especially in the districts of Mau, Ghazipur, Varanasi and Jaunpur. He entered politics around 1995 through student union in Government PG college, Ghazipur , became an MLA in 1996, and started challenging Brijesh Singh’s dominance. The two became the main gang rivals in the Poorvanchal region. In 2002, Singh allegedly ambushed Ansari’s convoy. Three of Ansari’s men were killed in the resulting shootout. Brijesh Singh was critically injured and presumed dead. Ansari became the undisputed gang leader in Poorvanchal. However, Brijesh Singh was later found to be alive, and the feud resumed. To counter Ansari’s political influence, Singh supported the election campaign of the BJP leader Krishnanand Rai. Rai defeated Mukhtar Ansari’s brother and five-time MLA Afzal Ansari from Mohammadabad in the 2002 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections. Mukhtar Ansari later claimed that Rai used his political office to award all the contracts to Brijesh Singh’s gang, and the two planned to eliminate him.

Mukhtar Ansari capitalised on the Muslim votebank to secure his electoral triumph during the Ghazipur-Mau area elections. The amalgamation of crime, politics, and religion instigated several outbreaks of communal violence within the region. Consequently, Ansari faced charges of inciting violence following one such riot. Notwithstanding, he was subsequently acquitted of these charges by the court.

While Ansari was lodged in the jail, Krishnanand Rai was shot dead in public along with his six aides. The attackers fired over 400 bullets from six AK-47 rifles; 67 bullets were recovered from the seven bodies with the help of Ramashrey Giri. Shashikant Rai, an important witness in the case, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 2006. He had identified Ansari and Bajrangi’s shooters Angad Rai and Gora Rai as the two of the gunmen who attacked Rai’s convoy. The police dismissed his death as a suicide. Ansari’s rival Brijesh Singh escaped from the Ghazipur-Mau area after Rai’s murder. He was later arrested in 2008, in Orissa, and later entered politics as a member of the Pragatisheel Manav Samaj Party.

In 2008, Ansari was booked for ordering an attack on Dharmendra Singh, a witness in a murder case. However, later, the victim submitted an affidavit requesting the proceedings against Ansari to be dropped. On 27 September 2017, Ansari was acquitted of murder.

On 9 January 2018, Ansari and his wife suffered heart attacks while in a prison.

Bahujan Samaj Party
Mukhtar Ansari and his brother Afzal joined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 2007. The party allowed them in, after they claimed that they had been framed in criminal cases for fighting against the “feudal system”, and promised to refrain from participating in any crimes. The BSP chief Mayawati portrayed Mukhtar Ansari as a Robin Hood and called him “a messiah of the poor”. Ansari fought the 2009 Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi on the BSP ticket, while still lodged in the jail. He lost to BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi by a margin of 17,211 votes; he received 27.94% of the votes, compared to Joshi’s 30.52%.

Mukhtar Ansari and two other persons were charge-sheeted for the murder of Kapil Dev Singh in April 2009. The police also found that he had ordered the murder of a contractor Ajay Prakash Singh in August 2009. In 2010, Ansari was booked for the murder of Ram Singh Maurya. Maurya was a witness to the murder of Mannat Singh, a local contractor allegedly killed by Ansari’s gang in 2009.

The two brothers were expelled by the BSP in 2010 after the party realized that they were still involved in criminal activities. A raid at Ghazipur jail, where he was lodged, had revealed that Mukhtar was living a luxurious life: items like air coolers and cooking equipment were found from his cell. He was shifted to the Mathura prison soon after the raid.

In 2004 FIR was logged by DSP Shailendra Singh against Mukhtar Ansari under POTA after recovering a light machine gun (LMG) from his premises. DSP Shailendra Singh was later implicated in the fake case of vandalism for recommending the arrest after falling out with the then ruling Samajwadi Party government led by Mulayam Singh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh. The former DSP was exonerated from fake case by the Yogi Adithyanath Government in 2021.

Quami Ekta Dal
After being expelled from the BSP and being rejected by other political parties, the three Ansari brothers (Mukhtar, Afzal, and Sibkatillah) formed their own political party called the Quami Ekta Dal (QED), in 2010. Earlier, Mukhtar had launched an outfit called the Hindu Muslim Ekta Party, which was merged with QED. In 2012, he was charged under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act for being a member of an organised crime syndicate.

In March 2014, Ansari announced that he would contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections against Narendra Modi from Varanasi and lost there with by a huge margin, besides contesting from Ghosi. However, in April, he withdrew his candidature stating that he wanted to prevent division of “secular votes”.

Back in the BSP
On 26 January 2016, Ansari rejoined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), before the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Legislative elections. There was widespread speculation about the Ansari brothers joining the Samajwadi party a couple of months before. BSP chief Mayawati defended his entry into the party, stating that the criminal charges against Ansari had not been proven, and that the party gives people a chance to reform themselves.

Eventually, Ansari merged his Quami Ekta Dal with the BSP in 2017, and won the state elections as a BSP candidate from the Mau assembly seat. He defeated his nearest rival Mahendra Rajbhar of the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (a BJP ally) by 6464 votes.

Positions held
Mukhtar Ansari was elected 5 times as MLA from the Mau constituency.

From To Position Party

1. 1996 2002 MLA (1st term) from Mau BSP
2. 2002 2007 MLA (2nd term) from Mau IND
3. 2007 2012 MLA (3rd term) from Mau IND
4. 2012 2017 MLA (4th term) from Mau QED
5. 2017 2022 MLA (5th term) from Mau BSP
   Conviction
   Ansari was in jail from 2005 in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab states for one or the other criminal case. In April 2023, he was convicted and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for killing BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai by an MP MLA court. Mukhtar Ansari was handed a life sentence on 13 March 2024 in connection with a fake arms licence case.

Death
Ansari died from a heart attack on 28 March 2024, at the age of 60 years.

Gangs
D-CompanyKala Kachcha gangChaddi Baniyan gangAshok Mahto gangThak Thak gang

Gangsters
M. P. JayarajKotwal RamachandraHaji MastanKarim LalaVaradarajan MudaliarBada RajanDawood IbrahimTiger MemonYakub MemonChhota RajanArun GawliAtiq AhmedJayendra ThakurAnandpal SinghManya SurveMaya DolasAnees IbrahimChhota ShakeelMuthappa RaiAbdul LatifAbu SalemRavi PujariAli BudeshEjaz LakdawalaD. P. YadavNirbhay GujjarSubhash Bhaskar NairGopal RajwaniPappu KalaniSantokben JadejaMukhtar AnsariMunna BajrangiVikas DubeyKamdev Singh
Henchmen
Dilip BuwaMaya DolasJamim Shah
Encounter specialists
Aftab Ahmed KhanDaya NayakPradeep SharmaRavindranath AngreVijay SalaskarSachin Waze
Laws
Gujarat Control of Organised Crime ActKarnataka Control of Organised Crimes ActMaharashtra Control of Organised Crime ActUttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crimes ActPuducherry Prevention of Anti-Social Activities ActPunjab Control of Organised Crime Act
Movies
AttahasaCompanyDGangs of WasseypurNayakanOnce Upon a Time in MumbaaiShootout at LokhandwalaShootout at WadalaClass of ’83KaalaaKabali