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Allahabad HC grants bail to Azam Khan in Quality Bar case
Senior Samajwadi Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh minister Azam Khan is currently lodged in Sitapur jail in Uttar Pradesh
The Allahabad high court on Thursday granted bail to senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan in the Quality Bar land encroachment case of Rampur district.
He will now be out of jail after the bail application was allowed in the present case, claimed Azam Khan’s counsel Imran Ullah. Thursday’s order was passed by a single-judge bench of Justice Samir Jain. Azam Khan, 77, is currently lodged in Sitapur jail. He has been behind bars since October 2023.
The case involves allegations of illegal occupation of the Quality Bar property, located on a highway in Saeed Nagar, Hardoi Patti, under Civil Lines police station in Rampur.
Earlier, on August 21, the court had reserved its order after hearing the counsel for the petitioner and the counsel for the prosecution side.
Revenue inspector Anangraj Singh had filed a First Information Report (FIR) on November 21, 2019 naming Syed Jafar Ali Jafri, Azam Khan’s wife Tazeen Fatima and his son ex-MLA Abdullah Azam. Azam Khan was not named in the initial FIR. The case was reinvestigated after five years and Azam Khan was made an accused.
During the course of the hearing, the applicant’s counsel Imran Ullah contended that there was undue delay in lodging the FIR. According to the FIR, the incident took place in 2013, he said.
Imran Ullah argued that the petitioner has been framed in this case due to political rivalry.
The case was filed in 2019, and Azam Khan was made an accused in 2024, he said. Opposing bail, additional advocate general Manish Goyal stated that Azam has a long criminal history; at the time of the incident, he was the urban development minister in the then government and had committed the crime by abusing his position and influence.
Khan had moved the high court in the Quality Bar case after his bail plea was rejected by the Rampur MP-MLA court on May 17, 2025.
Earlier, on September 16, Azam Khan was acquitted by a special MP-MLA court in a 17-year-old case involving a road blockade and damage to public property. The incident took place in 2008.
On September 10, the Allahabad high court granted bail to Azam Khan in a case involving the alleged forced eviction of residents from Rampur’s Dungarpur colony. Khan’s bail was approved by Justice Sameer Jain after the senior SP leader moved the high court, challenging his conviction and 10-year jail sentence handed down by an MP/MLA court in Rampur on May 30, 2024
The case involved the forcible eviction of residents and demolition of their houses in Rampur in 2016.
A former cabinet minister in the SP regime, Azam Khan has faced more than 80 cases, most of which were filed in 2019, including land grabbing, goat theft, machine theft, criminal trespass and cheating. A 10-term former MLA from Rampur and single-term ex-MP, Khan dominated the politics of the region since the early 1990s.
After the Samajwadi Party lost power in the 2017 UP assembly polls, Khan’s long period of incarceration began in February 2020.
On February 26, 2020, Azam Khan, his wife Tazeen Fatima, and son Abdullah Azam surrendered to police in Rampur and were sent to jail in a case involving a forged birth certificate for the son.
Khan was released on interim bail by the Supreme Court in May 2022 after 27 months in jail. He was re-incarcerated in October 2023 when Khan, his wife Tazeen Fatima, and their son Abdullah Azam were sentenced to seven years in prison in a case involving a forged birth certificate.
