Jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari has been hospitalised on Thursday after he suffered a heart attack in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda following complaints of abdominal pain earlier in the day.
The 60-year-old politician’s health condition deteriorated after he broke his ‘roza’ (fast observed by Muslims in the holy month of Ramzan), sources told India Today TV.
Even on March 23, Mukhtar Ansari was hospitalised for around 14 hours after he complained of abdominal pain.
Principal of Rani Durgavati Medical College, Banda, Sunil Kaushal told news agency PTI that Ansari was admitted to hospital at around 3.45 am following “pain in the stomach and problem in urinating and excretion” .
Mukhtar Ansari is a five-time former MLA from Mau Sadar seat and had been behind bars in UP and Punjab since 2005. He has over 60 criminal cases pending against him. Ansari was sentenced in eight cases since September 2022 by different courts of UP and was lodged in the Banda jail.
His name was on the list of 66 gangsters issued by Uttar Pradesh Police in 2023. His family members had earlier expressed apprehension that Mukhtar Ansari could be killed in a fake encounter.
Last week, Ansari alleged that his health condition deteriorated after he was served food allegedly laced with poison inside the prison. He alleged that he was also given food laced with poison 40 days ago.
On March 13, Ansari was sentenced to life imprisonment in a three-decade-old fake gun licence case. The MP-MLA court also slapped a fine totalling Rs 2 lakh on Ansari under various penal provisions.
Born in 1963, Ansari has been elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Mau constituency five times, including twice as a Bahujan Samaj Party candidate. He last contested the Assembly polls in 2017.
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