The state government will not pay the attorney whose services were retained to keep gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari in a Punjab jail, according to Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Sunday. Amarinder Singh, the former chief minister who was also the home minister, and Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa, the former minister of prisons, will be held accountable for the money, he continued.
Mann claimed in a tweet that the pair would be held responsible for paying back the money used to “live up to the friendship” and that if they didn’t, their pensions and other government benefits would be taken. For challenging the UP government’s request for custody of Ansari during the Amarinder Singh administration, the Supreme Court ordered that senior attorney Dushyant Dave be compensated Rs 55 lakh.
During the previous Congress administration, from January 2019 to April 2021, Ansari was imprisoned at Ropar. According to a recent inquiry report, some jail employees provided Ansari with “VIP facilities” while he was incarcerated. However, the findings did not bring any political figures to justice. The money would be collected from the respective ministries who were in charge of ensuring Ansari’s stay in the Ropar jail, Mann had stated in April of this year. In order to get permission to pay Dave’s fee, he had returned the file.
When the Uttar Pradesh administration requested that Ansari be transferred from Punjab to UP in 2021, Dave represented the Punjab government in the Supreme Court. Punjab had objected to the move.
The AAP government launched an investigation into the situation after taking control of the state. Harjot Bains, a former prisons minister, brought up the subject in the Vidhan Sabha.
The investigation report, recently given by ADGP R N Dhoke, urged legal action against several jail employees for allegedly accepting payments from Ansari rather than delivering the facilities.
Ansari was allegedly connected to some state and federal Congress leaders, according to a previous report. In January 2019, he was transported from UP to Punjab on a transit remand. He was the subject of a FIR when he demanded a 10 crore rupee ransom from a builder in Mohali’s Sector 70. However, the court never received the challan related to this FIR. The UP government complained to the top court that Punjab was “shamelessly” holding Ansari, which raised a problem.
Before obtaining Ansari’s custody through the supreme court, the UP government sent Punjab 25 notices.
