Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, Jan 2: The Allahabad High Court’s decision to convict former Uttar Pradesh MLA Mukhtar Ansari and sentence him to seven years in prison for intimidating and threatening to kill a jailer in 2003 was stayed by the Supreme Court today.
The Uttar Pradesh government was also served with a notice by a bench of Justices BR Gavai and Vikram Nath, who requested a response.
Ansari, a former member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly, had been exonerated by the trial court, but the Allahabad High Court overturned that decision and found him guilty and sentenced him to seven years in prison.
Ansari appealed the Allahabad High Court’s decision to the apex court.
Mukhtar Ansari, a gangster-turned-politician, was given a seven-year prison term on September 21, 2022, by the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court for threatening to shoot a jailer and brandishing a gun at him.
The trial court’s decision to exonerate Ansari had been overturned by the High Court.
The case began in 2003 when a jailer at the Lucknow district prison SK Awasthi filed a police report with the Alambagh station claiming he had been threatened for ordering the frisking of visitors who had come to meet Ansari.
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Additionally, Awasthi said that Ansari had abused him and pointed a gun at him. Ansari was found guilty by the High Court, which stated that he had been accused of more than 60 terrible crimes and had a reputation as a feared criminal and mafia don.
Ansari is now being held in the Banda prison in Uttar Pradesh. On April 7, in response to a ruling from the supreme court, he was transferred from a jail in Punjab to Banda.
