UP MLA, ex-MP mother booked in Gangsters Act

Samajwadi Party legislator from Kairana Nahid Hasan, his two-time Lok Sabha MP mother and 38 of their supporters have been booked under the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters Act.

The MLA, whose family is known for its clout in Kairana, has been named as the gang leader in the FIR, which was registered on February 6 by the Kairana Kotwali police station in-charge himself after a recommendation by Shamli District Magistrate Jasjit Kaur.

Hasan, 33, already faces around a dozen cases including attempt to murder, forgery and attempt to fan communal tension. He was jailed last year in connection with a pending case in Kairana and Jhinjhana police stations in Shamli.

“We have slapped the Gangster Act against 40 persons including the MLA and his mother. No action has yet been taken against anyone so far because we are still investigating the charges. Such is the clout of the Hasan family in the area that no one can dare to stand in witness and none can dare to register an FIR against any member of the family and their supporters,” Kairana police station in-charge Premveer Singh Rana told The Sunday Express.

“This is not the first time that I have been booked under fictitious charges by the police at behest of the state government. The cases against me are slapped due to political vendetta because only my family which has a 52 years of association with the politics can stand firmly against the BJP in the region,” said Hasan, who defeated Mriganka Singh, the daughter of influential BJP leader Hukum Singh, in the 2017 Assembly election.

The Hasan family has been involved the region’s politics back from 1969, when the MLA’s late grandfather Chaudhary Akhtar Hasan, a Muslim Gujjar, was elected as Corporator in the Kairana Municipal body. After holding multiple positions in Shamli district, he was elected as MP on a Congress ticket in 1984, defeating Mayawati by a more than two lakh votes.

Nahid Hasan’s father Munnawar Hasan is one of the few politicians to have been elected Lok Sabha MP (1996 and 2004), Rajya Sabha MP (1998-2003), Uttar Pradesh Assembly member (1991-1996) and UP MLC (2003 to 2004).

The SP MLA’s mother, Begum Tabassum Hasan, 50, was elected as MP from Kairana in 2009 and then again in the Kairana bypoll in 2018. She lost to BJP’s Pradeep Chaudhary in the 2019 general election and has been fielded by the SP, BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal at various times.

“It is shameful that a members of a political family like ours have been booked under the Gangsters Act. This is nothing but an irony in the present regime in which democracy has been replaced by the dictatorship with wanton misuse of the police force,” she said.