instances of communal violence in the region. After one such riot, Mukhtar Ansari was arrested on the charge of inciting people towards violence. However he was acquitted by the Court in this matter. While Ansari was lodged in the jail, Krishnanand Rai was shot dead in public along with his six aides. The attackers fired over 400 bullets from six AK-47 rifles; 67 bullets were recovered from the seven bodies. Shashikant Rai, an important witness in the case, he had identified Ansari and Bajrangi’s shooter who attacked Rai’s convoy, but later he was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 2006. The police dismissed his death as a suicide. Ansari's rival Brijesh Singh escaped from the Ghazipur-Mau area after Rai's murder. He was later arrested in 2008, in Orissa, and later entered politics as a member of the Pragatisheel Manav Samaj Party. In 2008, Ansari ordered an attack on Dharmendra Singh, a witness in a murder case. However, later, the victim submitted an affidavit requesting the proceedings against Ansari to be dropped. On 27 September 2017, Ansari was acquitted of murder. Bahujan Samaj Party Mukhtar Ansari and his brother Afzal joined the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in 2007. The party allowed them in, after they claimed that they had been falsely framed in criminal cases for fighting against the "feudal system", and promised to refrain from participating in any crimes. The BSP chief Mayawati portrayed Mukhtar Ansari as Robin Hood and called him "a messiah of the poor". Ansari fought the 2009 Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi on a BSP ticket, while still lodged in the jail. He lost to BJP's Murli Manohar Joshi by a margin of 17,211 votes; he received 27.94% of the votes, compared to Joshi's 30.52%. Mukhtar Ansari and two other persons were charge-sheeted for the murder of Kapil Dev Singh in April 2009. The police also found that he had ordered the murder of a contractor Ajay Prakash Singh in August 2009. In 2010, Ansari was booked for the murder of Ram Singh Maurya. Maurya was a witness to the murder of Mannat Singh, a local contractor allegedly killed by Ansari's gang in 2009. The two brothers were expelled by BSP in 2010 after the party realized that they were still involved in criminal activities. A raid in Ghazipur jail, where he was lodged, had revealed that Mukhtar was living a luxurious life: items like air