Newsmaker | Who is Amanatullah Khan, latest AAP MLA to be arrested by ED?

From being accused of assaulting Delhi’s chief secretary to obstructing public servants, Khan, held in a money-laundering case linked to the Delhi Waqf Board, has been at the centre of several rows over the years. He is also AAP's strongest Muslim voice.

AAP MLA Amanatullah Khan. (Express photo by Tashi Tobgyal)

Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Amanatullah Khan who was arrested on Monday in a case of alleged money laundering is no stranger to controversies but also very important to the AAP organisationally. His arrest hence has come as a blow to the party just months before the Assembly elections in Delhi.

The two-time MLA’s arrest in the case stems from the CBI’s investigation into alleged irregularities in appointments in the Delhi Waqf Board, of which he was the chairperson. According to the agency, Khan acquired “huge proceeds of crime” through illegal recruitment of staff and invested the amount to purchase immovable assets in the name of his aides. The CBI’s Anti-Corruption Branch (ACB) had arrested Khan in the case in 2022 on allegations of making “arbitrary and illegal recruitments”, “misappropriating” funds and renting out properties belonging to the Board. The complaint in the matter was filed in 2016.

In 2022, the Delhi Police also arrested the 50-year-old MLA during a demolition drive in his constituency Okhla, declaring him a “bad character”. This May, the Noida Police booked Khan and his son on charges of voluntarily causing hurt, provoking breach of peace, and criminal intimidation, among others, for allegedly assaulting an employee of a petrol pump in Noida Sector 95. According to Delhi Police records, as of 2022, Khan had 18 FIRs lodged against him and was either acquitted or discharged in 10 of those. Most of the FIRs had charges for obstructing public servants in their duty, intimidation, and causing enmity and hurt.

To a large degree, Khan has retained his popularity in his constituency because of his outspokenness, especially when it comes to the Muslim community and its causes. This is in sharp contrast to the AAP’s official cagey positions on Muslim issues.

Khan was born in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, in 1974 and his family subsequently moved to Delhi. He started as a businessman, gradually became a community leader, and then made his way into politics. In the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections, Khan, who lives in the Joga Bai area of Jamia Nagar in Delhi, contested his first election, entering the fray for the Lok Janshakti Party of the late Ram Vilas Paswan, and lost badly.

He moved to the AAP in 2015 — the party swept the elections that year, with Khan winning from Okhla — but found himself in the crosshairs of a rift between Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia on the one hand and Kumar Vishwas, who was one of the founding members. In 2017, Khan called Vishwas a “BJP agent” who was trying to “split the party”. In what was viewed as an attempt to placate Vishwas, Khan was made to step down from AAP’s political affairs committee, and later suspended. His suspension was revoked a few months later.

While Khan is now firmly established as one of the AAP’s senior leaders and one of the most important Muslim faces, Vishwas is out of the party’s ecosystem after repeated run-ins with its leadership. He, however, remains a member on paper. In 2018, he was involved in a major controversy after being accused of assaulting then Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash at Chief Minister Kejriwal’s residence. In 2021, a Delhi court ordered the framing of charges against him and fellow MLA Prakash Jarwal.

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In 2019-20, Khan’s profile rose as protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) started in Shaheen Bagh, which falls under his constituency and is quite close to where he lives. Though the AAP officially maintained a distance from the protests, Khan was seen frequently joining the protests.