The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain Samajwadi Party leader Mohammad Azam Khan’s challenge against a decision of the Allahabad High Court refusing to quash the chargesheet against his son in a fake birth certificate case.
A Bench led by Justice Hemant Gupta said it found no reason to set aside the High Court’s decision against Abdullah Azam Khan, who is an MLA from Suar in Uttar Pradesh.
The Bench, also comprising Justice Vikram Nath, declined to delve into the facts of the case. It said these would come up for examination during the trial.
Mr. Azam Khan, his wife Tazeen Fatima and son Mr. Abdullah Azam Khan had been in jail in a criminal case registered against them over two allegedly fake birth certificates issued to Mr. Abdullah Khan through fraudulent means from two different places.
The FIR lodged by BJP leader Akash Saxena at the Ganj police station in Rampur on January 3, 2019, alleged that Mr. Azam Khan and his wife helped their son obtain two fake date of birth certificates — one from Lucknow and another from Rampur.
Mr. Abdullah Khan was elected to the Uttar Pradesh Assembly in the previous polls, too, but the Allahabad High Court had cancelled the election on the ground that he was less than the required 25 years of age at the time of filing his nomination.
Mr. Azam Khan is one of the leading politicians from the Muslim community in Uttar Pradesh. He has been embroiled in 90 cases so far in the State. He was arrested on February 26, 2020 and was lodged in Sitapur Jail for almost 27 months till his release on May 20, 2022 pursuant to an order of the Supreme Court granting him bail.
Mr. Azam Khan’s lawyers maintain that 87 of the 90 FIRs were registered after the BJP came into power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Of these, 81 cases were registered during the period immediately before and after the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
A lawyer who represented Mr. Azam Khan said “some of the FIRs accuse him variously of participating in a conspiracy to steal a goat, stealing a buffalo, robbing an old woman of her jewellery and robbing a man of ₹16,500 from his pocket, to list a few”.
