BJP lawmaker Krishnanand Rai murder case: Mukhtar Ansari, six others acquitted by special CBI court

A Special Court on Wednesday acquitted former MLA and gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari and six others accused in the 2005 murder case of BJP legislator Krishnanand Rai. He was killed in broad daylight on November 29, 2005.

Special Judge Arun Bhardwaj exonerated all the accused in the case.

The trial of the 2005 murder case was transferred from Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh to Delhi by the Supreme Court in 2013 on a plea filed by Alka Rai, the wife of Krishnanand Rai.

He represented Mohammadabad Assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh's Ghazipur district.

Initially, Delhi Police had claimed that the then Uttar Pradesh MLA Mukhtar Ansari had ordered the killing of Krishnanand Rai, which was carried out by sharpshooter Sanjeev Maheshwari in November 2005.

Rai was ambushed on his way back home by assailants who used AK-47 rifles. Seven people died in total. Back then, senior BJP leaders such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L. K. Advani, Rajnath Singh, Kalyan Singh and Manoj Sinha demanded a CBI inquiry but the government initially rejected their calls for fear of being indicted.

The other accused in this case were Aijazul Haque, Rakesh Pandey, Ramu Mallah and Munna Bajrangi. It is to be noted that Munna Bajrangi was killed inside Baghpat Jail in 2018.