Azam Khan, son booked again for criminal conspiracy

Rampur (UP): After the Supreme Court directed that bail be granted to senior Samajwadi Party MP Mohd Azam Khan and his son Abdullah Azam in a case of alleged cheating and forgery of documents, the Uttar Pradesh police have now filed a supplementary charge-sheet in a related case, charging the duo under the non-bailable section of criminal conspiracy.

Khan and his son will now have to file a fresh bail application in order to get bail in this FIR, which was filed in 2019 in Rampur, pertaining to the alleged forgery of a birth certificate.

Khan's wife, Tanzeen Fatima, was also named in the FIR.

The Allahabad High Court had given conditional bail to all the three accused in the case in October last year, following which Tanzeen Fatima was released from prison.

Rampur's additional SP Sansaar Singh said, "We have filed a supplementary charge-sheet against Azam Khan, his wife and his son in this case and added Section 120B to it as there is clear evidence of criminal conspiracy."

Asked about the timing of the supplementary charge-sheet, Singh said "We had been working on the case. We took action after we received an application from the main applicant, Akash Saxena (a BJP leader), in this case."

A senior lawyer said that in cases where supplementary charge-sheet is filed with fresh charges -- even when the bail is approved by a court -- the applicant has to apply for bail in the new sections that have been added.

This comes as a fresh setback for the father-son duo, who have been in jail since February 2020, and who were granted bail by the apex court on Tuesday.

The court had observed that since the charge-sheet has been filed in the case, bail be granted to them after the trial court records the statement of the informant within two weeks.

Azam had allegedly helped his son get a second PAN card using forged documents. The incorrect date of birth enabled him to contest the Assembly elections in 2017 from Suar constituency in Rampur. Several cases of forgery have been registered against the Khans, but they have got bail in most of them.