AFTER NEARLY two years of in Sitapur jail, senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leader and former UP minister Azam Khan was released on Tuesday.
On Monday, the jail authorities received the release order from the Rampur court in the last pending case against him, making his release imminent. With orders now cleared in all cases in which he was incarcerated, Khan stepped out of jail, bringing an end to a prolonged legal battle.
The final case, in which the bail order was issued, was registered in 2020 at the Civil Lines police station in Rampur. It involved charges of cheating and other related offences.
“We have now received the release orders for Azam Khan in all the cases concerned,” said Sitapur jail Superintendent Suresh Kumar Singh on Monday.
In October 2023, a special court in Rampur convicted Khan, who is also a former MP, his wife Tanzeen Fatima, and their son Abdullah Azam Khan in a case related to the alleged forgery of Abdullah’s birth certificate that was registered in 2019.
The court sentenced all three to seven years of imprisonment, following which they were taken into custody and sent to jail. While Tanzeen Fatima and Abdullah were later granted bail in the case and subsequently released from jail, Khan continued to remain behind bars due to several other criminal cases pending against him.
Azam Khan, considered one of the SP’s prominent Muslim leaders, has long been a key figure in the party. His legal troubles began with a hate speech case filed against him ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, marking one of the first cases initiated against him. Since then, both the number of cases and the punitive actions have continued without pause. Multiple cases were also registered against his wife and son, Abdullah.
Khan and his son were also disqualified as members of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly following their convictions. In the 2022 Assembly elections, Azam won from the Rampur Sadar constituency, while Abdullah secured victory from the Suar constituency in Rampur.
According to the police, among over 100 cases lodged against Azam Khan, more than 80 were registered after the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. These cases span a range of charges, including land grabbing, cheating, and criminal trespass.
To date, Khan has been convicted in six cases, with appeals against some of these verdicts pending before higher courts. He has, however, been granted bail in all six matters. In addition, he has been acquitted in six other cases by trial courts.
The BJP government in the state has challenged some of these acquittals by filing appeals in the Allahabad High Court.
