As a sea of people turned up for gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari’s burial at his ancestral residence in Ghazipur’s Mehmoodabad amid tight security, Uttar Police kept a strict vigil to see if his wife and lady don, Afsa Ansari, would turn up to bid her final adieu to her deceased husband. However, Afsa, who has been absconding from the police since 2022, was not seen at the funeral.
Mukhtar Ansari, who was lodged in the Banda jail, was rushed to the Rani Durgawati Medical College on Thursday night when his health condition deteriorated. He died at the hospital during treatment. His body was brought to his home town around midnight on Friday and the last rites were held around 10 am.
Who Is Afsa Ansari?
Ansari’s wife Afsa has been on the run since 2022 after a court put a conditional stay on her arrest. There are at least nine criminal cases registered against Afsa, including under the Gangster Act. Police have put a bounty of Rs 75,000 on her head.
She is wanted in three major cases, including two cases of land grabbing in Chhavni line and Babeddi locality lodged in 2019 and another case registered in 2022 at Mau’s Dakshin Tola Police Station under the Gangster Act.
Afsa calls herself a homemaker and shares two sons with Ansair– Umar and Abbas.
Lady Dons Of UP
Terror of the urban mafia surged in UP for several decades under open political patronage of political parties, especially the Samajwadi Party (SP) and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). During SP, BSP reign, several lawbreakers were promoted to become lawmakers including Vikas Dubey, Virendra Paratp Shahi, Atiq Ahmad, Mukhtar Ansari, Aruna Shankar Shukla “Anna”, Vijay Mishra, Hari Shankar Tiwari, Uday Bhan Singh, Madan Bhaiyya, DP Yadav, Umakant Yadav, and Pawan Pandey.
However, after Yogi Adityanath took the reigns of UP in 2017, his government adopted a “zero tolerance” towards organised crime and criminals, which resulted in the elimination of several such criminals including Atiq Ahmad and Vikas Dubey.
While many male gangsters were met with justice, their wives emerged as ‘lady dons’ and are still out at large. News18 takes a look at some of these lady dons of UP.
After losing her son Asad and husband Atiq Ahmed, 51-year-old Shaista Parveen has now become one of the most-wanted criminals in Uttar Pradesh. She carried a reward of Rs 50,000 on her head.
It was after the murder of lawyer Umesh Pal on February 24, 2023, that Shaista came to the forefront of Atiq’s criminal empire. According to media reports, it was when Shaista went to meet her husband in Gujarat’s Sabarmati jail, that the two discussed killing Umesh Pal. She is one of the main accused in the Umesh Pal murder case.
Presently, four cases are registered against Shaista in Prayagraj. Of them, three are for cheating and one for Umesh Pal’s murder. As per the police, Shaista Parveen was part of the planning and execution of Umesh Pal’s murder. When Atiq Ahmed was in jail, Shaista played an active role in running his syndicate.
- Ayesha Noori and Other Women Of Ahmed Household
Apart from Shaista, a manhunt is also underway to nab Atiq Ahmed’s elder sister Ayesha Noori and her two daughters Unzela and Mantasha and Zainab Fatima, wife of his younger brother Khalid Azeem aka Ashraf.
Four of them are also wanted in the February 24, 2023, triple murders of lawyer Umesh Pal and his two police guards in Prayagraj.
The wife of Mukhtar Ansari’s close aide Sanjeev Maheshwari, Payal is wanted in a Gangsters Act case in Muzaffarnagar. In April, police sealed a commercial complex in Muzaffarnagar in the name of Sanjeev’s wife under provisions of the Gangsters Act.
The wife of scam mastermind Sanjay Bhati, Deepti Bahl is another most wanted woman gangster and fraudster in Uttar Pradesh and carries a cash reward of Rs 5 lakh.
Deepti is accused of a Rs 15,000 crore Bike Bot scam and has been on the run since 2019. Bhati, however, was arrested in June 2019.
Unlike others on the list, history-sheeter Neelam Verma is under police custody now. Verma, the director of Hello Ride, a bike-taxi company operating from Lucknow, was arrested by the UP STF in Lucknow in July last year. She was allegedly involved in a fraud of over Rs 100 crore and had been elusive since 2019. Verma is wanted in 23 criminal cases registered in Lucknow and had a reward of Rs 25,000 on her head.
Geeta Tiwari is called Gorakhpur’s first female don. She has been lodged in Deoria Jail for an alleged attempt to murder. She has been booked under Gangster Act and has been named in around eight cases, largely that of robbery and loot.
According to the police, she killed two men at the birthday party of her relative in Gorakhpur in 2020.
Tiwari used to live in a shelter home until she got married to a social worker named Shivkumar Tiwari in 2009. The duo, who used to play orchestra, soon started peddling drugs, some of which was seized when their house was raided. She took over the business in 2016 after the death of her husband.
Author: News Teller India
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