The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to entertain a plea seeking an inquiry into the death of jailed gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, Live Law reported.

A bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Rajesh Bindal told the petitioner, Mukhtar Ansari’s son Umar Ansari, to approach the Allahabad High Court instead.

Umar Ansari had filed the original petition while his father was alive and in jail, and had demanded that he be given protection and be transferred to a prison outside Uttar Pradesh.

The gangster-turned-politician died in custody at the Banda Medical College in Uttar Pradesh on March 28, 2024. Hospital authorities said he died of a cardiac arrest.

After Mukhtar Ansari died, his son sought to amend his petition to demand an inquiry into the cause of his death. Umar Ansari alleged that his father had been poisoned and denied medical treatment, leading to his death.

The Supreme Court, however, declined to hear the petition on Wednesday. The court said it had earlier entertained Umar Ansari’s petition under Article 32 of the Constitution only because it had demanded a transfer from one jail to another, Live Law reported.

Article 32 allows citizens to approach the Supreme Court seeking that their fundamental rights be enforced.

Mukhtar Ansari had a total of 65 cases against him and had been in jail since 2005 after he surrendered to the police in connection with a communal riot that took place in the town of Mau.

On March 14 last year, he was sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court for MPs and MLAs in the 34-year-old Ghazipur fake arms licence case. This was his seventh conviction over 18 months.

A week before his death, Mukhtar Ansari had told a court in the Barabanki district that his health had deteriorated after he was served food allegedly laced with poison inside the prison, reported PTI.

He had alleged that he was poisoned 40 days earlier as well.