The Enforcement Directorate on Sunday questioned BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari for around six hours at Banda district jail. A three-member ED team started the interrogation at 12 noon and left the jail after 6 pm.
This comes days after Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party (SBSP) president Om Prakash Rajbhar met the gangster-turned-politician in jail and said they had discussed the forthcoming Assembly polls.
Till Sunday evening, no information was available on why Ansari was questioned.
Pramod Tiwari, the jailor, said that he did not know when or where a case of money laundering had been registered against Ansari. “The ED team is here on the instructions of the court to question him,” Tiwari said.
The Mau MLA had been in Punjab’s Ropar jail for two years and three months before he was brought back to Uttar Pradesh amid tight security in April 2021. He has since then on more than one occasion expressed fear for his life.
Ansari was in jail in Punjab on extortion charges but his most daring crime was the 2005 daylight murder of BJP MLA Krishnand Rai and his six associates.
In September, he alleged that the jail authorities had given Rs 5 crore to fellow prisoners to kill him. His apprehensions were not without any basis. In 2018, Ansari’s sharp shooter Munna Bajrangi was gunned down in the Baghat jail where he had been lodged for the murder of Krishnand Rai.
The political activity around Ansari has increased his visibility. Rajbhar, who is allying with the Samajwadi Party for the Assembly polls, had said, “What is wrong with meeting Ansari?”
“When I was a minister, I met him in Agra jail, in Ropar jail and in Banda jail. At that time, the BJP did not see him as a criminal. Is he the only mafia in the state? Why does the state not release a complete list of mafias in the state?”, he asked.
If Rajbhar is indeed intent on getting Ansari to fight the polls, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav would likely to do a rethink on the alliance given his previously declared refusal to give tickets to criminals.