Authority upholds I-T attachment order in benami case against late Mukhtar Ansari

New Delhi: The Adjudicating Authority for the anti-benami law has confirmed a property attachment order issued by the Income-Tax Department as part of its probe against late Uttar Pradesh gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari.

The 3,234 sq feet measuring asset is worth Rs 1.05 crore and is located in the Dalibagh area of Lucknow. It was provisionally attached by the Lucknow Benami Prohibition Unit (BPU) of the tax department in December 2023 under the provisions of the Prohibition of Benami Properties Transaction (PBPT) Act.

The Authority has upheld the I-T order and has agreed with the investigating officer's probe that had declared a Ghazipur-based woman Tanveer Sahar as the 'benamidar' of the asset and Ansari's wife Afshan Ansari and Ganesh Dutt Mishra, an alleged gang member of the late strongman, as the "interested parties".

Sahar is stated to be an "aide" of the Ansari family. The department had not named any "beneficial owner" of this asset.

The Authority disapproved the arguments made by Sahar in her defence.

Benami means 'no name' or 'without name' and such properties are those in which the real beneficiary is not the one in whose name the property has been purchased.

Ansari died due to cardiac arrest at a hospital in Banda in March 2024. He was 63.

He was a five-time MLA from Mau Sadar seat and was behind bars in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab since 2005. He had over 60 criminal cases pending against him. He was sentenced in eight cases since September 2022 by different courts of Uttar Pradesh and was lodged in the Banda jail.

The taxman had unearthed the said immovable asset after prolonged questioning of Mishra and records obtained from the Uttar Pradesh Police and the revenue department and financial documents from various agencies, including banks.

The Authority, in its order issued on January 24, said the transactions related to the asset were "benami" on four grounds.

Those are the absence of genuine financial consideration, the lack of financial capacity of the named owners, the control of the property by Atif Raza on behalf of Ansari and the repeated pattern of ownership transfers designed to "obscure" the "true beneficiary".

Raza is Ansari's brother-in-law and the person who "managed" all the finances of the Ansari family, according to the department.

According to the investigation, Mishra mortgaged the Dalibagh property as collateral for a Rs 1.60 crore loan taken from the Union Bank of India in 2014 by a company named Aaghaaz Project and Engineering Private Limited, whose shareholders were Afsan Ansari, his son Abbas Ansari and some others.

The property was released by the bank after the loan was paid back and it was transferred to the benamidar--Sahar-- in November 2020, according to the I-T department.