Fact Check: Misleading Claim Regarding Home Minister Amit Shah’s Remark on Mukhtar Ansari

What is the claim?

People are spreading a video of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in which he is said to have admitted to “killing” Indian politician-turned-gangster Mukhtar Ansari at a public gathering. Ansari is said to have died of a heart attack on March 28 in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda jail.

The 57-second film shows Shah speaking in Hindi. He says, “The biggest thing we have done is that we have freed ourselves from the NIZAM…” The letter “N” in NIZAM stands for “Naseemuddin Siddiqui,” who was fired by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This letter “I” stands for the Bharatiya Janata Party, which freed Imran Masood. Azam Khan, Atiq Ahmed, and Mukhtar Ansari are named next. He says that UP will be run by NIZAM again if the SP-BSP (Samajwadi Party-Bahujan Samaj Party) union comes back.

The video was shared by several people on X (formerly Twitter). This is an old copy of the post that you can read here.

However, the claim is not true. Someone shared an old video of Amit Shah talking about beating opposition leaders like Mukhtar Ansari without giving any other information.

How did we find the truth?

Based on a reverse picture search of the clip’s keyframes, we learned that the video was made on April 10, 2019, before the 16th Lok Sabha elections. There was a video on the official Bharatiya Janata Party YouTube account called “BJP has freed UP from Nizaam: Shri Amit Shah, Kasganj.” A lot of people shared the 57-second YouTube movie at the same time.

The video was also posted on the party’s YouTube page on the same day as ours, but it was longer.

There are 34:34 minutes in the original speech that make up the popular video clip. It starts at 19:30 and ends at 20:27. Shah says in his speech that the biggest thing the BJP has done is get rid of NIZAM, which means for Naseemuddin Siddiqui, Imran Masood, Azam Khan, Atiq Ahmed, and Mukhtar Ansari, the leaders of the opposition. Khan and Ahmed ran for office on Samajwadi Party (SP) tickets, while Siddiqui and Masood are members of the Indian National Congress.

Ansari is a five-time Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Uttar Pradesh’s Mau Sadar. He used to be a member of the BSP. Three times, he ran for the spot as an independent, and once, he ran under the banner of his own party. But in 2017, he went back to the BSP.

During the election campaign, Shah spoke at another gathering in Firozabad on April 10, 2019. He also talked about NIZAM at that gathering, saying, “Of all the things the BJP government has done since it took power in the state, getting rid of NIZAM was the most important.”

Shah had also said in Firozabad, “These men have either been sent to jail or have left Uttar Pradesh.” It is likely that riots would happen again if the SP-BSP union won. Nasimuddin Siddiqui, Imran Masood, Azam Khan, Atique Ahmed, and Mukhtar Ansari would be in charge of the state again.

In 2023, Atiq Ahmed was killed by police as they took him from jail to the hospital. Ansari, on the other hand, died after spending almost 19 years in different bars in North India.

The verdict

People shared an old video of Amit Shah criticizing SP-BSP leaders from UP to say that he admitted to killing Mukhtar Ansari. The video was made in 2019, a long time before Ansari died. It is clear that the Union Minister was talking about the people who were jailed or left Uttar Pradesh after the BJP took over the state in 2017. Because of this, we have marked this claim as false.