All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi on Sunday visited gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s residence in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghazipur, who died of cardiac arrest in Banda last week.

Expressing grief over Ansari’s death, Asaduddin Owaisi said he stands with Mukhtar Ansari’s family in the time of this utter grief.

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“Today we went to the house of the deceased Mukhtar Ansari and paid tribute to his family. In this difficult time, we stand with his family, supporters and loved ones,” he said in a post on X. He further said, “Insha Allah, the light will break through this darkness. If you are ‘Pharaoh’ then ‘Moses’ will also definitely come.”

Ansari, 63, was laid to rest at his family’s ancestral graveyard at Kali Bagh in Mohammadabad town of Ghazipur district under tight police vigil on Saturday. The last rites were performed in the presence of Ansari’s younger son Umar Ansari, his brothers Afzal Ansari, Sibgatullah Ansari and Mukhtar’s nephew and Mohammadabad SP MLA Shoaib Ansari. He was buried next to the graves of his parents.

Ansari was brought to Banda’s Rani Durgawati Medical College from the jail after he was found unconscious in his barrack. According to the official release from the hospital, Ansari was brought to the hospital around 8:25 pm on Thursday. A team of nine doctors attended to him before he died, the release added. Ansari’s family, however, claimed that he was “given poison in the food.” The family also demanded a judicial inquiry into this death that was billed as unnatural by his son Umar Ansari and brother and MP Afzal Ansari.

The postmortem report said that Ansari died due to cardiac arrest. A panel of five doctors, who conducted the postmortem, identified a 1.9 x1.5 cm “yellow area” in the heart, suggesting a possible clotting, HT earlier reported.

To probe the allegations, a three-member team has been formed that will conduct a magisterial investigation into the death of Ansari.

In April 2023, Ansari was convicted and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for the murder of BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai by an MP-MLA court. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on March 13, 2024, in a case related to the use of forged documents for obtaining an arms licence in 1990.