There are moments in political life that come with unexpected moral resonance. It all started with a simple glance across the street, followed by a casual question and then an unexpected answer. It was the farewell ceremony for the outgoing police chief of Uttar Pradesh and the state’s chief minister Yogi Adityanath joined the ceremony. In the years he had been in office, the CM’s hard take on law and order had set a transformation in process. Once known for its dismal law and order record, UP was seeing visible changes. So much so, that Yogi’s uncompromising stance was gaining praise from various quarters across the country.

Amid the speeches and the ritual of farewell, Yogi Adityanath’s gaze wandered across the road till it stopped at a building that refused to be ignored. It stood under bright lights, like a fortress, a mansion of opulence surrounded by defiantly tall walls. The arrogance enshrined in concrete.

“Whose mansion is this?" Yogi asked.

The reply was matter of fact, “Mukhtar Ansari’s."

But it was an answer loaded with decades of dread and even acceptance that mafia dons like Ansari had thrived in the lawless landscape that was once Uttar Pradesh. Ansari had built a name for himself, as a dispenser of terror, as someone above the law, he was urban lore in the........

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