In a major setback to Samajwadi Party, its MP from Rampur Azam Khan, his wife and SP legislator Tazeen Fatma, and son & former MLA Abdullah Azam were on Wednesday sent to seven-day judicial custody in connection with Abdullah’s fake birth certificate.
A Rampur court had declared the trio as ‘absconders’ and issued non-bailable warrants against them after they failed to appear before it. Over 85 cases were lodged against Azam Khan by the district administration of Rampur and other authorities ever since Samajwadi Party was voted out in March, 2017.
Khan and his family were earlier issued warrants after they ignored repeated summons by the courts in one of the cases lodged against them in July last year.
Earlier on Tuesday, a local MP-MLA court in Rampur had ordered attachment of properties of Azam Khan, Tazeen Fatma and Abdullah Azam after they failed to appear in court.
Left with no option, the trio surrendered before Rampur district court and the judge sent them to jail for seven days. The next hearing of the case will be on March 2.
Khan, his wife and son made several attempts to procure anticipatory bail which was denied by the court in three separate cases related to Abdullah’s date-of-birth certificates, PAN cards and passport.
Rampur SP Santosh Kumar Mishra said, “They have been sent to judicial custody till March 2 in connection with a case pertaining to a forged birth certificate of Azam Khan’s son Abdullah. The latter allegedly gave a wrong date of birth while filing his nomination papers for Assembly elections.”
Several cases have been filed again Azam Khan on various charges including, land-grabbing, encroachment, book theft, power theft, statue theft, buffalo & goat theft. The SP leader’s son was also booked for forgery in birth date documents last year.
Khan and his family have been charge-sheeted under sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
On its part, Samajwadi Party blamed the ruling BJP for cases against Khan and suggested that it was political vendetta.
“The SP doesn’t consider any action taken in revenge appropriate. Governments can’t run on bias,” the party tweeted in Hindi.
“The Samajwadi Party also trusts the judicial process. We have faith in court, we will get justice,” it added.
On the other hand, the Bharatiya Janata Party welcomed the development. “Azam Khan did politics for himself only. It was for exploitation of the poor. We welcome the court decision to send him to jail. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav should give an explanation on the kind of people associated with him in politics,” BJP spokesperson Chandra Mohan said.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath took a dig at Khan without naming him in the Assembly on Wednesday.
“My cabinet colleague Balbir Singh Aulakh, who is from Rampur, asked me whether Rampur will get 24X7 power supply and I told him that Rampur mein bijli chamak rahi hai. Bijli ke chamak se faltu virus nahi paida hota hai (it’s lightening in Rampur, and it kills the unwanted virus).”
“We are clearing the mess left by previous Samajwadi Party regime and the dirt in any form must be cleaned quickly. The previous regime worked only for one particular village (read Sefai, native village of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav),’’ said Yogi.