Amid tight security, gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator from Mau wanted in heinous crimes, was handed over to Uttar Pradesh Police by its Punjab counterparts for taking him back to a jail in Banda district by road, officials said on Tuesday.

After covering some 900-km road stretch in over 16 hours, a 100-strong armed contingent of Uttar Pradesh Police, headed by a Deputy Superintendent, on Monday reached the Central Jail in Punjab’s Ropar town, some 60 km from the state capital, where Ansari was lodged for two years and two months in an extortion and criminal intimidation case.

“Mukhtar Ansari was handed over to Uttar Pradesh Police after completing all legal and medical formalities. He has been taken to the Banda jail in an ambulance under a heavy security cover,” a senior police official told IANS here.

A medical check-up of Ansari, comprising a coronavirus test, was done before handing over to the Uttar Pradesh police.

Punjab Police brought five-time legislator Ansari in 2019 from the Banda jail on a production warrant in an extortion case relating to a builder of Mohali town. Since then he had been lodged in the Ropar jail.

The Supreme Court had on March 26 asked the Punjab government to hand over Ansari to Uttar Pradesh Police within two weeks, ignoring pleas of the former.

The Punjab government had written to the Uttar Pradesh’s Additional Chief Secretary (Home) on April 3 to make suitable arrangements for handing over Ansari to the police before April 8.

Interestingly, Ansari was produced on a wheel-chair in a Mohali court near here last week in the extortion and criminal intimidation case. He was brought to the court in a bullet-proof ambulance registered in Uttar Pradesh, whose documents were later found fake.

The ambulance later was found abandoned on the Chandigarh-Nangal highway.

Justifying the use of ambulance, a Punjab Police official told the media that a jail inmate could be transported in a private ambulance on medical grounds and the cost of the vehicle has to be borne by the prisoner.

The opposition Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) had accused the state government of giving ‘political shelter’ to Ansari by keeping him in the Ropar jail as a ‘state guest’ on a frivolous charge.

As per the police, Ansari has over 50 criminal cases against him, including those related to murder and kidnapping.