A court in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur today (October 18) convicted Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan, his wife Tanzeem Fatima and son Abdullah Azam Khan in a 2019 fake birth certificate case, and awarded them a seven-year jail term.
“After the court verdict, the trio was taken into judicial custody and will be sent to the jail directly from the court itself,” said Arun Parkash Saxena, a former District Government Counsel, who was representing the prosecution.
MP-MLA court magistrate Shobit Bansal awarded the three convicts the maximum seven-year sentence. The FIR in the case was lodged by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Akash Saxena at the Ganj police station in Rampur on January 3, 2019.
It was alleged that Azam Khan and his wife helped their son obtain two fake date of birth (DOB) certificates – one from Lucknow and another one from Rampur. According to the chargesheet, in the certificate issued by the Rampur municipality, Abdullah Azam’s date of birth was mentioned as January 1, 1993. The other certificate said he was born in Lucknow on September 30, 1990.
Abdullah Azam, who won from the Suar constituency in the 2022 Assembly election on the ticket of the Samajwadi Party, was already convicted by a Moradabad court in a 2008 case of wrongful restraint and assault on a public servant to deter him.
Two days after being convicted and awarded a two-year jail term in February 2023, Abdullah Azam was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly. He went to the High Court, seeking a stay of the conviction which was refused.
Under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act (RPA), 1951, anyone sentenced to imprisonment of two years or more shall be disqualified from the date of such conviction and remain disqualified for another six years after serving time in jail.
