Punjab CM refuses to sign Rs 55 lakh bill for don’s jail comforts

After dreaded gangster Atiq Ahmed, another mafia-politician from Uttar Pradesh — Mukhtar Ansari — is in the spotlight. The focused shifted to Punjab after chief minister Bhagwant Mann refused to clear a file with a bill of Rs 55 lakh incurred on “facilitating” the stay of the gangster in Ropar jail.

Mann accused the previous Congress government of providing a “comfortable stay” to Mukhtar Ansari in the Rupnagar jail and said he is seeking advice on recovering Rs 55 lakh legal fee from the then ministers.

Local reports stated that Punjab’s Aam Aadmi Party government is mulling to recover the amount from the ministers concerned in the previous Congress regime.

“We are asking legal experts from whom this recovery is to be made. We will not pay from the state exchequer,” Mann said at a rally in Jalandhar on Thursday.

The fresh trouble for the gangster-politician comes days after the Uttar Pradesh police consolidated a list of 65 gangsters who are under their among. Mukhtar Ansari too is on the list.

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The state police had last month demolished Mukhtar Ansari’s two-storey house in Jahangirabad in Mau district. The ‘luxurious’ house was under the name of the gangster and his sons Abbas Ansari and Umar Ansari. The action was initiated after it was alleged that Abbas and Umar Ansari did not get the necessary approval for the construction and neither did they get its map passed.

Uttar Pradesh Police had approached the Supreme Court to get the custody of Ansari, who remained in a jail in Rupnagar (formerly Ropar) from January 2019 to April 2021. Awarding his custody to UP Police, the top court had said it was being denied to them on trivial grounds under the guide of medical issues.

Ansari was kept in Punjab in an extortion case in Mohali and was later moved to a jail in Banda in UP.

Without naming Ansari, Mann said in a tweet in Punjabi, “A UP criminal was kept in Ropar jail with facilities… (He was) not produced despite issuance of warrants 48 times, expensive lawyers were engaged at a cost of Rs 55 lakh. I have returned the file of expenditure. Thinking of recovering this expenditure from the then ministers on whose orders this decision was taken.” Mann said this “open plundering” of taxpayers’ money cannot be tolerated at any cost.

Apart from ensuring a comfortable stay, the then government ensured this “hardcore criminal” does not face any difficulty in the jail and escapes the legal action against him, he said in a statement later.

“The benevolence of the previous rulers towards this dangerous criminal can be judged from the fact that though 48 warrants were issued against him but the government did not bother to produce him,” Mann said.

This “atrocious loot” of public money was totally unwarranted and undesirable, he added.

While hearing the Uttar Pradesh government’s plea seeking custody of Ansari in March 2021, the Supreme Court had noted that the former MLA from Mau was involved in several cases of attempt to murder, murder, cheating and conspiracy apart from offences under the Gangsters Act lodged in UP.

The court was also informed by the UP government that between February 14, 2019 and February 14, 2020, Ansari’s custody was denied to the state police by the Punjab jail authorities 26 times mainly on medical grounds referring to diabetes mellitus, skin allergy, hypertension, backache and throat infection.

(With inputs from PTI)

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