Samajwadi Party’s Azam Khan sent to judicial custody

A district court on Wednesday sent Samajwadi Party (SP) member of Parliament from Rampur, Azam Khan, his wife Tazeen Fatima and son Abdullah Azam to seven days in judicial custody after they surrendered before the court in a case related to the alleged forged birth certificate and other documents of Abdullah.

On Tuesday, the court rejected the Khans’ anticipatory bail pleas and issued non-bailable arrest warrants against them. The court also ordered the police to attach their properties.

“Additional district judge Dhirendra Kumar rejected the anticipatory bail applications of Azam Khan, his wife and son in three separate cases related to Abdullah’s fake birth certificates, PAN cards and passport,” additional district government counsel Ram Avtar Saini said.

In September 2019, the court issued summons to all the three members of the family after the police filed a charge sheet against them for suspected forgery.

Khan, the MP from Rampur, has 88 cases pending against him, including land grabbing, encroachment and of theft books, livestock and electricity.

Abdullah was disqualified as the SP’s Suar MLA by the Allahabad high court on 16 December, 2019 because of a discrepancy in his election affidavit over his date of birth. The Khans have been charge sheeted for providing false information in Abdullah’s passport application and booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Passport Act.

The HC gave its verdict on the basis of a plea filed by Congress’s Nawab Kazim Ali Khan alleging that Abdullah was under-age and furnished a forged birth certificate document in his bid to contest 2017 UP assembly elections.

“Abdullah’s educational certificates show his date of birth as January 1, 1993, but Lucknow Nagar Nigam says he was born on September 30, 1990,” Kazim alleged.

On January 3, 2019, local BJP leader Akash Saxena had also filed a First Information Report (FIR) at Ganj Kotwali police station in Rampur alleging that Khan and his wife helped Abdullah to obtain two fake birth certificates – one from Lucknow and another from Rampur . The next hearing of the case will be on March 2.