Who is Yunus Ansari?

KATHMANDU, March 12: Yunus Ansari, 41, debuted in the country´s media industry in mid-2000 when he teamed up with Bhaskar Rajkarnikar, former chairman of Advertising Agencies Association of Nepal, to start a 24-hour news channel that would later be named Avenues TV.

Like his financial sources, details about his investments, his associations and whereabouts prior to the media venture remain sketchy. But a police investigation launched to uncover his shady past indicates that he visited Pakistan many times and even stayed there for lengthy periods.


Ansari was born in Bara district. Before being arrested, he possessed three premises in Kathmandu Valley -- at Bluebird Mall, Lagankhel and Chabahil. He walked around with six security guards, most of them former army personnel. He chaired the National Wrestling Association until recently. It is unclear whether he ever took part in the sport.

By the time Avenues TV started test transmissions in mid-2007 Ansari had already pulled out his stake in the project.

However, the son of Salim Miya Ansari, a former minister in the royal government, had not given up his dream of running a television channel. On September 14, 2006, he acquired a television broadcasting license and his National Television went on air on December 7, 2009.

But less than a month later, Ansari hogged the media headlines for all the wrong reasons.

He was arrested on January 2, 2010, a day after his bodyguard Kashiram Adhikari and two Pakistani nationals were held in Thamel for possessing counterfeit Indian currency and brown sugar. Adhikari told this daily later that month that Ansari´s family was pressuring him to commit perjury in court to get Ansari acquitted of all charges.

Even before Ansari´s arrest, a section of Indian media linked Ansari with ´D´ Company run by Dawood Ibrahim, India´s most wanted man. CNN-IBN online on September 24, 2009 carried a report claiming that Ansari led a Kathmandu racket that pumped fake Indian currency notes printed in Pakistan into India via Nepal.

But the charge is yet to be substantiated in a court of law.

In April 2010, Kathmandu District Court sent Ansari into judicial custody. He is facing charges of counterfeiting and drug peddling. The court is yet to convict him.

But the fake Indian currency racket continued to be active in Nepal even while Ansari was in detention. That could mean two things: Ansari was never the leader of the racket, or someone else had taken over.

The puzzle was solved four months ago when police arrested four individuals possessing four million rupees in fake Indian currency.

“The arrested individuals told police that a man named Babar was leading the racket in Nepal,” an unimpeachable police source said.

Police investigation eventually disclosed that Babar was none other than Ansari.

“Ansari had continued to operate the fake Indian currency racket while in detention at Central Jail,” the source said. This was substantiated by records of his communications. “We recovered a sim card from him. Telecom records showed that he had contacted Pakistani phone numbers from Central Jail using the sim and had text-messaged directions to accomplices in Nepal,” the source added.

Police have prepared a detailed report mentioning findings of the investigation and they will present it in court to support the charges labeled against Ansari.

The investigation suggests that Ansari had considerable assets in Kathmandu registered under the names of one Chaukhat Mahato and several of his employees.

Thursday was not the first time Ansari´s life was targeted. The killers of media tycoon Jamim Shah, who was shot dead in February last year, had come looking for Ansari also. Ansari admitted to police after Shah´s assassination that the killers would have finished him off as well had he not been under arrest.

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