Ansari in judicial custody in ambulance case

A court in Uttar Pradesh on Monday remanded mafia don-turned-BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari to judicial custody in a case of alleged forgery and cheating in the registration of a bulletproof ambulance used to ferry him between the courts and jail.

Barabanki: A court in Uttar Pradesh remanded mafia don-turned-BSP MLA Mukhtar Ansari to judicial custody in a case of alleged forgery and cheating in the registration of a bulletproof ambulance used to ferry him between courts and jail in Punjab.

Barabanki Chief Judicial Magistrate Kamalapati remanded Ansari to 14-day judicial custody on Monday after the local police put the Mau MLA under arrest in the ambulance case and produced him in the court through video conference from Banda Jail. After having been brought from the Ropar jail in Punjab recently, Ansari was lodged in the Banda jail as an undertrial in a slew of criminal cases. While remanding him to his judicial custody, the CJM said the accused would continue to remain in the Banda jail.

Appearing for Ansari, his counsel Randhir Singh objected to his client's arrest in the Ambulance case, saying he had nothing to do with the registration of the ambulance with the Barabanki Regional Transport Office. Singh said the entire case was based on the statement of a co-accused, Dr Alka Rai of Mau's Shyam Sanjeevani Hospital, and there is no evidence against his client.

The court, however, remanded Ansari to judicial custody till June 28, relying upon the FIR lodged by the Barabanki police on a complaint by the local RTO official. The case against Ansari was registered after it was found that a bulletproof ambulance with a Barabanki number was used to ferry him from Ropar jail to a Mohali court near Chandigarh in an extortion case.

The ambulance was registered in the name of Dr Rai of Mau's hospital, the police found during the probe, and Dr Rai had told police that Ansari and his aides, Mujahid and Rajnath Yadav, had forced her to sign some documents on the pretext of getting an ambulance transferred in the name of the hospital.

She had also accused Ansari and his aides of preparing her forged voter identity card to get the ambulance registered with the RTO, the FIR read, which named Ansari, his aides and Dr Rai as accused in the case.

(PTI)