Ansaris of Ghazipur

The Ansaris were a family of freedom fighters, diplomats and scholars of impeccable repute. Then came Mukhtar Ansari, one of UP’S most dreaded gangsters. Days after Mukhtar’s death in Banda jail, ASAD REHMAN travels to the eastern UP town to map his terrain of terror and crime

THE PHONE goes off once again. Afzal Ansari, five- time MLA and two- time MP, reaches for it, look s at the screen, places the call on speaker mode and sits back. It’s a serving police officer on the line. “Bahut dukh ki baat hai. Bada bura hua. Ek baar mulaqat hui thi unse 1991 mein ( It is very sad… I met your brother once in 1991).” Afzal responds with “Achcha… hmm”. The call ends.

Hours after the funeral of gangster- politician Mukhtar Ansari, the terrace of the Ansari residence in Mohammadabad, a town 20 km from the district headquarters of Ghazipur, is packed with supporters and mourners. Dressed in a white kurta- pyjama, Afzal Ansari, Mukhtar’s elder brother, is seated on a sofa on the terrace, his conversations interrupted by his incessantly ringing phone — from politicians, police officers, supporters.

Late on March 28, Mukhtar Ansari, 63, one of three Ansari brothers and allegedly the most notorious in police records, died in Banda prison. While his family alleged that he was poisoned in jail, the post- mortem report said he died of a heart attack.

Two days later, Mukhtar, who has been in jail since 2005, was buried in the family’s 4.5- bigha ‘ Kaalibagh kabristan’, a cemetery that is the resting place for 25 of the Ansari family members. The headstones on each of these tombs are signposts of a different time — when the Ansaris were scholars, freedom fighters, diplomats and politicians of impeccable repute. And then there’s Mukhtar’s grave, for now a mound of fresh soil.

If there was ever an honest epitaph of Mukhtar on his tombstone, it would mention both his dizzying cult status in eastern Uttar Pradesh and the cases lodged against him at different police stations in UP and New Delhi — 65 in total, of which 16 were for murder. He was convicted eight times in the last two years, including for the 1991 murder of Varanasi strongman Awadhesh Rai and the 2005 murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai.

Speaking about the recent court convictions, UP Additional Director General ( ADG), Prosecution, Dipesh Juneja, told The Indian Express, “The work done for the prosecution of Mukhtar Ansari was part of the current government’s policy of taking action against top mafia in the state. We diligently followed up on cases and ensured his conviction in eight cases in the last two years.”

On the af ternoon of March 30, as Mukhtar’s son younger Umar lowered his father’s body into the grave, he bid him goodbye by fixing Mukhtar’s moustache to the famous twirl that he is known to sport.

Cricket, politics & crime

The Ansaris own two houses that stand facing each other in Mohammadabad. Together spread over 25,000 square feet, it’s here that the joint family resides. At least 15 SUVS, all with numbers ending with 786 ( considered auspicious in Islamic culture), are parked in the courtyard of the two houses.

Sitting on the terrace of one of the two houses, Afzal talks about his younger brother — the one obsessed with cricket, sunglasses, rifles and SUVS. “He was great at sports. He played all outdoor sports but was particularly good at cricket. He was a great batsman.”

Obaid- ur- Rahman, 60, who played with Mukhtar as part of Ghazipur PG College’s cricket team, says he “only knows Mukhtar the cricketer”. “He was an all- rounder and match- winner. He could flip any match on its head. I remember one match in Gorakhpur where he scored 63 runs after coming in to bat at number five, and our team scored a total of 140 runs. We won that match only because of Mukhtar. What a player he was!,” says Rahman, a historian.

Mukhtar, 61, was the youngest of six children – three daughters and three sons – born to Qazi Subhanullah, who was Nagar Palika chairman from Mohammadabad in the 1970s, and Rabia Bibi. Sibgatullah, 73, a twotime MLA from Mohammadabad and a cleric associated with the Tableeghi Jamaat, is the only Ansari brother who doesn’t figure in police records. Neither do his three sons.

After his graduation from Ghazipur and postgraduation from Varanasi, Mukhtar turned to politics.

“One must understand our family background to know why politics was a natural choice for Mukhtar. Our ancestors fought for Independence… That’s how Mukhtar took to social work,” he says with no hint of irony.

In 1994, Mukhtar made his electoral debut, contesting the Assembly bypoll from Ghazipur on the symbol of the Communist Party of India ( CPI). “He lost the election to SP- BSP joint candidate, Raj Bahadur Singh, who was a sitting Cabinet minister in Mulayam Singh Yadav’s government,” Afzal says as those sitting around him on the terrace listen intently.

Mukhtar won his first election in 1996 as a BSP candidate from the Mau Assembly seat, then repeated the feat again in 2002, 2007, 2012 and 2017. In the 2022 elections, he passed on the baton to his son Abbas who won from Mau on the ticket of the Suheldev Samaj Party ( now a BJP ally).

Talking of Mukhtar’s electoral successes, Afzal is irked at references to his younger brother as gangster and mafia. “Find me one person here in Mohammadabad, Ghazipur or anywhere who calls him that and I’ll concede your point,” he says.

Diplomats, scholars, freedom fighters… and Mukhtar

The Ansaris trace their lineage to a group of people who are said to have migrated to India in 1526 from Herat in present- day Afghanistan. The family settled down in India to become affluent zamindars, with those close to them claiming that they owned 21 villages around the time the Zamindari Act was abolished in 1951.

Over the last century, the Ansaris have held some of the most prestigious positions in the country. One of Mukhtar and Afzal’s paternal granduncles, Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari ( 1880- 1936), was president of the Indian National Congress in 1926- 27 and was one of the founders of Jamia Millia Islamia University and its chancellor for eight years before Independence.

On their maternal side was Brigadier Mohammad Usman, a war hero who was the highest- ranking officer of the Indian Army to be killed in action during the 1947 war with Pakistan. Known as Naushera ka Sher, he was posthumously awarded the Maha Vir Chakra.

Then there was Fareed- ul- Haq Ansari, a two- time Rajya Sabha member ( 1958- 64) and a freedom fighter.

In more recent times, Hamid Ansari, Mukhtar’s uncle, was Vice- President of India for two terms, India’s permanent representative to the United Nations and Vice Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University. Hamid Ansari’s father Abdul Aziz Ansari was Comptroller of Insurance in 1947 and is said to have turned down Jinnah’s personal offer to join Pakistan.

Mukhtar, however, went down a very different path. In 1978, when he was merely 15, Mukhtar got into police records on charges of criminal intimidation. A family member said he allegedly threatened a local in Ghazipur after intervening in a dispute between two families. The first of the 16 murder cases against him was lodged in 1986, when he was 23. He had allegedly killed a local contractor, Sachidanand Rai, with whom he was competing for a Mandi Samiti contract. Overnight, Mukhtar became the man to be watched in Mohammadabad.

“Those were times when local mafia men had a free run in eastern UP. They grew i n prominence pr i marily b ec ause t hey were rewarded by political parties who used their influence for electoral gains. Their success inspired many other strongmen in those times,” said a senior police officer in UP.

More killings followed. On August 3, 1991, in a case of gang rivalry, Awadhesh Rai was shot dead outside his residence in Varanasi, allegedly by Mukhtar and other assailants.

Years after the murder, in the 2014 elections that Awadesh’s brother Ajay Rai ( now the UP Congress chief) contested against Narendra Modi, Ansari withdrew his candidature, saying he didn’t want “secular votes to be divided”. On June 5 last year, a Varanasi court convicted Mukhtar in the Awadhesh murder case and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The most high- profile of murder cases against Mukhtar was of Krishnanand Rai, who was allegedly backed by Mukhtar’s main rival Brijesh Singh. On November 29, 2005, Rai, the sitting BJP from Mohammadabad, had left his ancestral home to inaugurate a cricket match when Mukhtar’s gang members, led by Munna Bajrangi, waylaid his car. Unusually for Rai, he was not in his usual bulletproof car. An officer who probed the case said one of the assailants climbed onto the bonnet of the vehicle and fired at Rai. “The killers fired at least 500 rounds from their AK47s,” the officer said.

As the bodies of the seven who died that day lay in the courtyard of Rai’s family house in Mohammadabad, police counted at least 60 bullet holes in Rai’s body.

Though Mukhtar was lodged in prison then, he, Afzal and five others were accused in the case. In 2019, a special CBI court acquitted them. An appeal against the acquittal is pending in the Delhi High Court.

Speaking from Varanasi, Rai’s son Piyush says he was 17 when his father was gunned down. “My father was murdered only because he defeated Afzal Ansari in the 2002 elections,” says Piyush, who calls himself a BJP worker.

Mukhtar was also accused of rioting during the communal clashes in Mau in 2005, when he travelled to the riot- hit district in an open jeep brandishing a rifle.

In 2009, Mukhtar allegedly masterminded another set of killings — that of Manna Singh, a 45- year- old road contractor, and his associate Rajesh Rai — in an extortion attempt. Six months later, an eyewitness in the case, Ram Singh Maurya, and his security officer were killed allegedly by Mukhtar’s men.

Mukhtar was acquitted in the case in 2017 while three of the alleged gunmen were sentenced to life imprisonment.

From Mau, Manna’s brother Ashok Singh, 57, tells The Indian Express, “My brother’s driver was also injured in the incident, but he didn’t give his testimony due to fear. There were governments that supported Mukhtar… Four years after the case reached the local court, the murder case couldn’t be heard because Mukhtar would send a representative to court to give an excuse for not turning up,” says Ashok.

Asked about the popularity of the Ansaris in Ghazipur, Piyush Rai points to their electoral setbacks. “If he was a messiah, why did he lose the 2009 election from Varanasi to BJP’S Murli Manohar Joshi? Why didn’t he contest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014 despite announcing his candidature? That election, he contested from Ghosi and lost,” says Piyush.

His mother Alka Rai is a former MLA from Mohammadabad who won the 2017 Assembly elections on a BJP ticket. She was defeated by Mukhtar’s nephew in the 2022 polls in Mohammadabad.

Mukhtar’s descent i nto the world of crime meant the once scholarly and illustrious Ansaris were now caught in a web of criminal cases. At least four other family members cur re ntly have cases against them.

Brother Afzal, a former MLA and MP, faces three cases. Mukhtar’s elder son Abbas, 32, is currently lodged in Kasganj jail and couldn’t attend his father’s funeral despite an application in court seeking temporary release. A national- level trap shooter, Abbas had in the run- up to 2022 UP state elections allegedly threatened officials on camera. He faces several other cases on charges related to fraud and criminal intimidation and under sections of the Gangsters Act.

Mukhtar’s younger son Umar, 25, also a shooter who went to London for higher studies and is now back in Ghazipur, has six cases against him.

Mukhtar’s wife Afsha, 51, is wanted in at least 13 cases, including those under the Gangster’s Act, and is on the run with a reward of Rs 75,000 on her head. It was 1989 that Mukhtar married Afsha, a distant relative who he fell in love with during their college days.

Mukhtar’s burial

In Mohammadabad, at least in the immediate aftermath of Mukhtar’s death, Afzal’s dare — to find someone who will talk ill of Mukhtar — isn’t off the mark.

As the burial rituals began, three women — Malti Devi ( 46), Rukhsar Begum ( 38) and Chameli ( 41) — stood at a distance from the sea of mourners.

“Hum log toh chahenge ki hum apne Bhaiyya ko ek baar dekh le par majma itna hai

( We would have liked to see our brother, Mukhtar, one last time, but there is such a rush),” says Malti.

As Rukhsar calls him “dildaar ( generous)”, Chameli adds, “Whether it is Eid, Diwali… For all festivals, he sends money to all houses in Mohammadabad.”

In Mohammadabad, there are stories in abundance of the Ansari family’s “generosity”, of Mukhtar as “gareebon ka masiha ( messiah of the poor)”, of food packets that come from the Ansari household during floods.

For three days after Mukhtar’s death, shops in Mohammadabad’s Yusufpur area remained shut until the Ansari family appealed to them to get back to work. Here, traders talk of how the Ansaris ensured that unlike in other markets, the local goons never turned up for “vasooli ( extortion)”.

Piyush Gupta, 30, a third- generation trader who runs his family business of wholesale edible oils and sugar in the market, says he doesn’t care how Mukhtar or the Ansari family was to the outside world but to “us, they are blood relatives”. Whether Hindu or Muslim, the family helps everyone. All the Hindu traders in this market will tell you how he helped their businesses grow.”

Mukhtar’s “rutba ( influence)” – or “khauf

( dread) as his critics called it – spread far beyond Mohammadabad or Ghazipur, extending across eastern UP.

Afzal refers to the crush of people who had turned up for the funeral as a sign of Mukhtar’s popularity and the Ansari family’s goodwill. “We did not send buses or cars to get these people here. Neither did we distribute lunch packets. People came because of their love for us and Mukhtar and b ecause t here was anger about his death,” he says.

A senior UP police officer, who has investigated Mukhtar in several cases, says that while the goodwill he earned was real, it was a template straight out of UP’S bahubali textbook.

“Yes, he did help the poor. But where did the money come from? He extorted money, threatened officials and kille d people. Whatever he earned through illegal means was spent on the poor and to build a kingdom for himself in Ghazipur, Mau and some other districts. This is what all bahubali

( strongmen) do.”

“His support wasn’t confine d to Muslims, but cut across castes and classes. Many of the gang members he hired from far- off places were Hindus. One of his associates, Sanjeev J eeva, was f rom Muzaffarnagar, which is 1,0 0 0 km from Ghazipur. That gives you a sense of his influence and reach. And the fear he instilled in people’s minds,” added the officer.

Back on the terrace of his house, Afzal dismisses these fears and calls the cases against Mukhtar “political vendetta”.

Sitting beside him, his nephew Suhaib Ansari “Mannu”, the sitting MLA from Mohammadabad and son of Sibghatullah Ansari, says, “If the cases against my uncle were lodged by common people, I would have been regretful. But all these cases are lodged by police officers or the administration. They are all political. We have no regrets.”

Once again, Afzal is interrupted by a phone call. The phone goes on speaker mode. It’s a senior Samajwadi Party leader. “Chunav mein vyast hun mein. Aaonga bahut jaldi ( I am busy with elections. I will visit you soon),” says the leader. Afzal says he understands. The call ends.