When Mukhtar Ansari’s body was laid on a bier at his ancestral home in Yusufpur Mohammadabad town of Ghazipur district, Uttar Pradesh, for people to pay their last respects, Umar Ansari, 26, Mukhtar’s younger son, twirled his father’s moustaches. It was a rare moment of physical proximity in a relationship marked by distance. Through his life, Umar had spent just a little over a year with his father, who had been in jail since 2005, with 65 criminal cases against him, many for murder, extortion, and benami properties allegedly worth ₹600 crore. “He lived and was loved like a king. I wanted my father to look like the hero that he is,” says Umar. “He was the best father anyone could ever have.”
It is twilight, and insects buzz around the light above Umar. He asks one of the many helpers to put it off, and sits crestfallen in semi-darkness, on a veranda that extends to a sprawling terrace of one of a series of homes owned by the extended family. At least 100 armed U.P. police personnel surround the houses that are reached through one-car-broad lanes. A few visitors sit under a tree with a large canopy after they have broken the Ramzan fast.
Mukhtar, 63, died on March 28 after he suffered a cardiac arrest in Banda jail. He was elected as a legislator from the Mau Assembly constituency five times over, from 1996 to 2022, thrice from behind bars.
