Samajwadi Party MLA Azam Khan gets interim bail in land grabbing case

Allahabad: The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday granted interim bail to Samajwadi Party MLA Azam Khan in a case related to the alleged grabbing of land for his Jauhar University project. The bail order was passed by Justice Rahul Chaturvedi.

The interim bail to Khan was granted on the condition that he has to return the entire enemy property to paramilitary forces and furnish a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh and two sureties of like amount. However, Khan will not be able to walk out of the jail as a Rampur district court last week issued a warrant against him in another case.

Azam Khan's lawyer Khaleel Ullaha Khan said that the high court has granted him bail, but the MLA from Rampur Sadar wouldn't be able to come out of the jail because the police have served him a warrant at Sitapur jail in another case.

Khan has been lodged in Sitapur jail for more than two years. An FIR was lodged at Azem Nagar police station in Rampur against Khan and others in 2019 for alleged grabbing of enemy property and misappropriation of public money of more than hundreds of crores of rupees.

It was alleged in the FIR that during partition one Imamuddin Qureshi went to Pakistan and his land was recorded as enemy property, but Khan in collusion with others grabbed the 13.842- hectare plot.

The interim bail to Khan comes after the Supreme Court on May 6 expressed displeasure over the delay in hearing his bail application in the land grabbing case, saying this is a "travesty of justice".

A bench comprising justices L Nageswara Rao and B R Gavai noted that Khan has got bail in 86 out of 87 cases, and said it would hear the matter on May 11. In another case, the Court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate 1st, a special court for MP/MLA, in Rampur on May 6 issued a warrant against Khan.

According to police officials, an FIR was registered against unidentified persons in a case on March 3, 2020, at Kotwali Sadar police station on the complaint of Deputy Education Officer Prem Singh Rana under IPC Section 420 (cheating).

In the FIR, it was stated that the "recognition" of Rampur Public School has been obtained fraudulently from the education department. Gajendra Tyagi, SHO of Kotwali police station and the investigating officer of the case, said that he had served the warrant on Saturday.

During the course of the investigation, it was found that Khan, who is chairman of Jauhar Trust that runs Rampur Public School, had used fake documents to obtain no-objection certificates from the education department and the fire department to run the school, the police officer said.

Tyagi said that Khan has been made an accused in the case under the charges of sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 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 IPC.

Tanzeen Fatimah, Khan's wife facing charges of IPC Section 420 (cheating), had been granted bail earlier in the case, but now she has to appear before the court after the aforementioned additional charges were added in the FIR, police said. 

The Rampur court has fixed May 19 as the next date of hearing in this case.