India, April 9 -- It is often said that sometimes silence is more deafening than cranking noise. At the burial of mafia don-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari in Mohammadabad of Ghazipur district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, there was an estimated crowd of around 30,000 mourners, or more perhaps, who raised the slogan of "mafia nahi messiah hain" (he was not a mafia, he was a messiah). Similar moments of outbursts, although not of the same magnitude, were witnessed when another mafia-don-turned-politician of Uttar Pradesh Atiq Ahmed was killed.

Top Uttar Pradesh Opposition leaders, meanwhile, have demanded a high-level investigation into the death of the jailed gangster-turned politician Mukhtar Ansari, with the Samajwadi Party (SP) president...