Mukhtar Ansari's son moves SC, seeking his transfer from UP jail apprehending threat

New Delhi [India], December 4 : Mukhtar Ansari's son Umar Ansari has moved the Supreme Court seeking his father's transfer from Banda Jail to any jail outside Uttar Pradesh apprehending an imminent and serious threat to his father. The petitioner has mentioned various incidents that took place in Uttar Pradesh including Atiq Ahmad killing case.
On April 15 this year, Atiq Ahmed and his brother Khalid Azim alias Ashraf were shot dead while being escorted by police officers for a routine medical check-up and the killing was captured on live television, the petitioner mentioned.
Mukhtar Ansari's son father Umar Ansari urged the top court to pass an appropriate direction to transfer his father, Mukhtar Ansari from Banda Jail, Uttar Pradesh to any jail outside the State of Uttar Pradesh in a state ruled by any party other than the BJP.
He has also sought to pass an appropriate direction that his father be produced before Courts only through virtual conferencing.
Umar in the petition said he apprehends an imminent and serious threat to his father Mukhtar Ansari's life who is currently lodged in Banda Jail (Uttar Pradesh). "The Petitioner's father is a well-known political figure in the State of Uttar Pradesh and has been a Member of Legislative Assembly for five consecutive terms from Mau constituency in Uttar Pradesh.
As the Petitioner's father is from a political party that is in opposition, politically and ideologically, to the ruling dispensation in the State, the Petitioner, the Petitioner's father, brother and their family have been targets of persecution by the State," read the petition.
"The State has consistently been taking a personally inimical position against the Petitioner's family, particularly his father, but now the Petitioner's father has received reliable information that his life is in grave danger and there is a conspiracy afoot involving several actors within the state establishment to assassinate him in Banda jail," the petition said.
"The Petitioner's father has relayed this information to his son i.e. the Petitioner and thus the Petitioner, extremely fearful and concerned for his father's life, has been constrained to approach this Court with the sole aim of protecting the life of his father.
The Petitioner apprehends a grave and imminent threat to his father's life and limb in Banda Jail. As per the information received by the Petitioner through his father, the modus operandi of his assassination shall be one which is not novel but as has been used to carry out killings in jail in several other cases. As per the information received from reliable sources within the police establishment, the persons who have been hired to assassinate the Petitioner's father shall be arrested by the police or summoned on remand in some petty crime, produced before the court and then remanded to judicial custody. Then, they shall be taken to Banda Jail where the Petitioner's father is currently lodged. This shall give the said persons the desired proximity to the Petitioner's father," the petition said.
"Thereafter, these hired killers will be provided access to arms inside jail and an opportunity by way of a lapse in security systems that they can take advantage of through complicit jail officials. The standard mode of operation is to give the attack the color of a fight between the inmates to give the entire incident the misleading cover of a 'gang war'.
As mentioned above, this not-so-novel method of killing within the jail has already been used to cover the killing of one Meraj Ahmad, who was a co-accused with the Petitioner's father in a case under Maharashtra Control of Organized Crimes Act, and both were subsequently acquitted.
They said Meraj Ahmad along with his associate Mukim Kala was shot dead inside a high-security barrack of Chitrakoot District Jail in UP in May, 2021," the petition said.
The petitioner said that there is disturbing trend of extra-judicial killings in the state which was seen in the various instances including Atiq Ahmad killing cases and December 2019 undertrial Shahnawaz murder case.