Lucknow Bench sentences Mukhtar Ansari five-year jail in Gangster Act case

The Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday sentenced former MLA Mukhtar Ansari to five-year imprisonment in a 23-year-old case related to the Gangster Act.

Justice D K Singh passed the order overturning the acquittal by a special MP-MLA court in 2020.

The court also imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on Ansari.

State counsel Rao Narendra Singh said the FIR was lodged with the Lucknow's Hazratganj police in 1999 and a special court had acquitted Ansari in 2020. The state had filed an appeal against acquittal in 2021.

The High Court on Friday allowed the state government's appeal and sentenced Ansari to five years in jail, he said.

On Wednesday, Mukhtar Ansari was awarded seven-year jail in another case for threatening a jailer and pointing a pistol at him.

In 2003, the then Lucknow district prison jailer SK Awasthi had lodged an FIR with the Alambagh police alleging that he was threatened for ordering a search of people who came to meet Ansari.

A trial court had acquitted Ansari in this case also.

Mukhtar Ansari is currently lodged in the Banda jail.