LUCKNOW: The Allahabad High Court on Thursday gave major respite to incarcerated Samajwadi Party stalwart and former cabinet minister Mohammad Azam Khan by granting him bail in connection with the Rampur Quality Bar land grab case. The single bench of the court, comprising Justice Sameer Jain, had reserved its order after the final hearing on August 21.
The decision, announced this week, paves the way for the veteran Samajwadi Party leader’s release from Sitapur jail, where he has been lodged since 2023. With this decision, Khan is expected to walk out of the prison.
Earlier, his bail plea was rejected by the Rampur MP-MLA Court in May. The case pertains to alleged fraudulent allotment/possession of a property called Quality Bar, located in the Rampur district, Uttar Pradesh. The area is Saeed Nagar, Hardoi Patti, on a highway under Civil Lines police station.
The allotment reportedly happened in 2014. Azam Khan’s legal team comprising senior lawyers, including former Additional Advocate General Imran Ullah, Mohammad Khalid and Vineet Vikram, argued that the case, filed in 2019, was based on alleged irregularities dating back to 2013 and that Azam Khan was named as an accused only in 2024, almost a decade later.
In the complaint lodged against Khan, it was claimed that during his tenure as cabinet minister in Akhilesh Yadav’s government, he attempted to take over Rampur’s Quality Bar by influencing the tender process. His lawyer contended that the tender was issued in the names of his wife and son through due procedure and there was no evidence of power misuse.
The FIR, lodged on November 21, 2019, by bar owner Gagan Arora, alleged that an attempt was made to forcibly occupy the property located on Rampur’s Saeed Nagar highway stretch. The then Revenue Inspector Anangraj Singh had registered the case. Along with Khan, his wife Dr. Tazeen Fatima, son and ex-MLA Abdullah Azam, and former Chairman Syed Zafar Ali Jafri were also named in the case.
Khan has been lodged in Sitapur Jail since October 2023 after being convicted in a fake birth certificate case. Khan, along with his wife and son were sentenced to seven years by the Rampur MP-MLA Court. For security reasons, Khan was shifted to Sitapur Jail.
The High Court later stayed his sentence in the case. Earlier on Tuesday, the SP leader was acquitted by a special MP-MLA court in a 17-year-old case involving a road blockade and damage to public property. The 76-year-old leader faces over 89 cases, most of which were filed between 2017 and 2019. He had earlier walked free in May 2022 after getting bail in multiple cases, but was re-incarcerated the following year.
His legal troubles, combined with his frail health, have kept him away from active politics for the last seven to eight years. Despite his court battles, Azam Khan remains a formidable figure in Rampur politics. A close associate of late Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav, he has been a party loyalist for over four decades. Even while in jail, Akhilesh Yadav retained him as the party’s national general secretary, underlining his continued importance within the SP.