A court on Saturday awarded a two-year sentence to Mau Sadar MLA Abbas Ansari, a BJP ally and son of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari who died mysteriously in jail custody last year, for electoral malpractices and criminal intimidation among other offences.
The 33-year-old Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party member stands to lose his Assembly seat unless a higher court stays or overturns the trial court order.
The MP-MLA court of chief judicial magistrate M.P. Singh found Abbas guilty of violating the model code of conduct by terrorising people and threatening government officials during an election rally in his constituency on March 3, 2022.
Abbas had allegedly said he would secure votes from people even against their wishes and declared that once he came to power, he would punish officials who had crossed him. His party was at the time a Samajwadi Party ally but later went over to the Yogi Adityanath-led NDA.
A lawmaker is automatically disqualified from the legislature if handed a jail sentence of two years or longer. Abbas will also have to pay a fine of ₹3,000. "We shall try to get a stay on the order from the high court. His Assembly membership will remain intact if the high court stays the lower court’s order," Ansari’s lawyer Daroga Singh said.
"Initially, he was booked for criminal conspiracy and undue influence or (im)personation at an election, for which he would have got not more than a six-month term. But the police added additional offences during the inquiry. We hope the high court will consider our points."
Apart from the erstwhile IPC sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 171F (undue influence or personation at an election), the police booked Abbas under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion or race), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 189 (threats of injury to a public servant).
Abbas became a first-time MLA from Mau Sadar in 2022, replacing his father Mukhtar who represented the constituency five times straight from 1996, twice as BSP member, twice as Samajwadi-backed Independent and once as Qaumi Ekta Dal member.
Mukhtar, a mafia don who had amassed huge wealth through murder, kidnapping and extortion, was convicted of various offences since 2022 and handed two life sentences.
He was lodged in Banda jail but died in hospital in March last year. Jail authorities said he had suffered cardiac arrest but his family alleged slow poisoning in jail. Mukhtar’s wife Afsha Ansari, a gangster in police records, has been in hiding for the past three years and was recently declared an absconder.