India's Jailbirds Win Elections

Mukhtar Ansari has been in jail since 2005, charged with ordering a rival’s murder by hit men who pumped 400 bullets into the victim’s car. Neither that charge nor any of the more than 30 others against him cost him his day job as a state legislator.

From behind bars, Ansari—who has yet to be convicted of anything—was just reelected by almost 6,000 votes after polling results were announced on March 6 in Uttar Pradesh, a 560-mile swath of India stretching southeast from New Delhi. This is Ansari’s fourth consecutive election to the state legislature since 1996, three times from prison. “Anyone I killed got what they deserved, but it’s not like I have killed a busload of people,” the six-foot-five Ansari says as he sits in his cell in Agra. “The poor need my protection. I only fight against the powerful.”