Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) on April 16 declared 11 candidates in Uttar Pradesh for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections including a ticket to Shrikala Singh, wife of gangster-turned-politician Dhananjay Singh, lodged in jail from the Jaunpur constituency. Gangster-turned-politician Dhananjay Singh has been sentenced to seven years of imprisonment in a 2020 kidnapping and extortion case. He is currently with the Janata Dal (United).
What is the case
In 2020 Dhananjay Singh and his associate Santosh Vikram were guilty in the case of kidnapping of Namami Gange project manager Abhinav Singhal. Muzaffarnagar resident Singhal had filed a case against Singh and his partner Vikram on May 10, 2020, at Line Bazar police station under IPC sections of kidnapping, extortion, conspiracy and others. According to the FIR, Vikram, along with two associates, kidnapped Singhal and took him to the residence of Singh where the former MP came with a pistol and abused him and pressured him to supply low-quality material. On refusal, he threatened Singhal and demanded extortion, it was alleged. However, the former MP was arrested in this case and later got bail from the Allahabad High Court.
Singh and politics
Singh had plans to contest the Jaunpur Lok Sabha seat on the NDA constituent JD-U ticket. However, after the BJP declared former Maharashtra home minister Kripashankar Singh as its candidate from that seat, he got disappointed. The former MP was reportedly trying to get a ticket from the Samajwadi Party. Singh, who served as a member of Parliament in the 15th Lok Sabha from 2009 to 2014 as a Bahujan Samaj Party member, is described as ‘Purvanchal Bahubali’. In 2011, BSP president Mayawati expelled him from the party on charges of anti-party activities. He had won elections for the first time in 2002 from the Rari Assembly seat as an independent candidate.