New Delhi, Dec 4 (IANS): Gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s son, Umar Ansari, has petitioned the Supreme Court alleging that there is a plan to assassinate his father in Banda Jail prior to the 2024 polls.

The plea claimed that “state officials, rival politicians, and persons within the police establishment” have hatched a plan to murder the political figure, who has been a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), for five-consecutive terms from Uttar Pradesh’s (UP) Mau.

The writ petition filed under Article 32 of the Constitution prays for transfer of Mukhtar Ansari to any jail outside UP in a “state ruled by any party other than the BJP.”

“As the petitioner’s father is from a political party that is in Opposition, politically and ideologically, to the ruling dispensation in the State, the Petitioner, the Petitioner’s father, brother and their family have been targets of persecution by the State,” the plea stated.

It alleged that the people who have been hired to assassinate Ansari will be arrested by the police or summoned on remand in some petty crime and then will be taken to Banda Jail. Thereafter, these hired killers will be provided access to arms inside prison, the petition claimed.

It added, “The standard mode of operation is to give the attack the colour of a fight between the inmates in order to give the entire incident the misleading cover of a ‘gang-war’.”

The plea stated that there is “a disturbing trend of extra-judicial killings” in UP referring to the killing of Atiq Ahmed and his brother on live television and similar incidents.

“These incidents go on to show that the State police is either complicit in the attacks on undertrials belonging to the Opposition or, in the very least, is deliberately failing in its duty to provide protection to sensitive prisoners. Therefore, a strong case is made out for the transfer of the Petitioner’s father to any jail outside the State of Uttar Pradesh in a state ruled by any party other than the BJP,” it added.