After spending 27 months in jail on charges that range from serious to bizarre, Samajwadi Party (SP) stalwart and Rampur Sadar MLA Mohammad Azam Khan has emerged as a symbol of marginalisation of Muslims during the ‘double-engine’ government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Mr. Khan, one of the most powerful Ministers in the SP-led Uttar Pradesh government, was arrested on February 26, 2020 after a flurry of FIRs were filed against him two years after the BJP government led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath came to power in the State in 2017. The first of those FIRs was filed on January 3, 2019 based on a BJP leader’s complaint that Mr. Khan had allegedly forged his son’s birth certificate, while 81 cases were registered immediately before and after the Lok Sabha polls that year. Mr. Khan finally walked out of Sitapur district jail on May 20 this year, a day after the Supreme Court exercised its special powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to grant him interim bail in a land grabbing case, the last of the 88 cases he was implicated in.
