Former MP Dhananjay Singh was on Saturday shifted from district jail here to Bareilly jail, over a month after his conviction in a 2020 kidnapping and extortion case, a senior police officer said.

On March 6, Singh and his associate Santosh Vikram were found guilty in the case of the kidnapping and extortion of Namami Gange project manager Abhinav Singhal. He was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment and since then he has been lodged in Jaunpur district jail.

Jaunpur Superintendent of Police (SP) Ajay Pal Sharma said in compliance with the government order, the former MP was sent from the district jail here to Bareilly jail at 8 am on Saturday.

A senior district official said that an MLA of the district had written a letter to the government for his transfer, saying that Dhananjay’s wife Srikala Reddy is contesting elections from the Jaunpur parliamentary constituency on the Bahujan Samaj Party ticket.

Reddy, the chairman of Jaunpur Zila Panchayat, BSP’s candidate from Jaunpur Lok Sabha seat.

The MLA alleged that Singh was pressuring the locals to support Reddy in elections by calling them to jail and urged that in such a situation, his stay in the district jail is not justified.

Taking cognizance of the matter, the government shifted Singh from Jaunpur jail to Bareilly jail, the official said.

Singh, considered a strongman, had won the Lok Sabha elections from Bahujan Samaj Party in 2009.

Singh was reportedly preparing to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Jaunpur on Janata Dal’s (United) seat but his conviction made him ineligible to contest the election.