New Delhi: The Supreme Court docket on Monday stayed an Allahabad excessive courtroom order convicting former Uttar Pradesh legislator Mukhtar Ansari and sentencing him to seven years in jail for allegedly intimidating a jail official by pointing a gun at him in 2003.
A bench of justices BR Gavai and Vikram Nath issued a discover to the state authorities, directing it to file its response to the petition filed by Ansari. “That is solely an interim keep. We’ll resolve on confirming it after listening to the state,” the bench stated.
On September 21 final 12 months, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad excessive courtroom sentenced the four-term former MLA to seven years in jail and reversed the acquittal order handed by a trial courtroom in December 2020. The case in opposition to Ansari was lodged in April 2003, when Lucknow district jail jailer SK Awasthi alleged that he was threatened for ordering his subordinates to frisk Ansari’s guests on the jail. The then jailer additionally alleged that the politician had pointed a revolver at him and abused him.
Showing for Ansari, senior advocate Kapil Sibal together with advocate Nizam Pasha argued that this was a transparent case of acquittal the place not one of the witnesses supported the prosecution case and even the complainant, the jailer in query, didn’t help the allegations levelled in opposition to the petitioner.
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The excessive courtroom relied on the statements given initially by a few of the eyewitnesses at the start of the trial to carry that the acquittal was wrongly concluded, he stated. Ansari’s workforce identified that these witnesses turned hostile throughout cross-examination.
In his petition, Ansari additional stated that the prosecution supplied no clarification as to how the revolver was introduced contained in the jail. The revolver was not produced in the course of the trial and the title of the guests, who supposedly got here to fulfill Ansari on the day of the incident, had been by no means introduced on file, the petition stated.
“The order (of excessive courtroom) depends on bald and baseless averments of the prosecution in regards to the reality of felony instances filed in opposition to the petitioner which might be nonetheless pending trial, and even casts doubt on earlier judgments in unrelated instances whereby the petitioner had been acquitted…,” Ansari stated in his plea. “An order of acquittal should not be overturned if the view taken by the trial courtroom is a believable one.”
The Supreme Court docket bench stayed the excessive courtroom order, and remarked: “The excessive courtroom interference is feasible provided that the trial courtroom order is perverse and unattainable.”
The Uttar Pradesh authorities opposed the keep, with extra advocate common Garima Parshad saying: “This isn’t a match case for grant of keep. Since 1986, there are greater than 60 felony instances in opposition to this individual.”
Ansari is presently lodged in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda jail, the place he was introduced from a Punjab jail on April 7 final 12 months after an order from the highest courtroom.
The Allahabad excessive courtroom, whereas convicting the gangster-turned-politician, had relied on the popularity of Ansari as a mafia don having over 60 heinous crimes registered in opposition to him. The excessive courtroom famous how Ansari created concern within the minds and hearts of the folks together with authorities officers and executed grievous crimes involving homicide and kidnapping, from inside jail.