Abdullah Azam, son of senior Samajwadi Party (SP) MP, Mohd Azam Khan, has been released on bail from the Sitapur jail after almost 23 months of imprisonment.

He was released on Saturday evening. Abdullah said that he would definitely contest the upcoming Assembly elections from the Suar Assembly segment and seek people’s blessings.

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Waving to his supporters waiting outside the gates of Sitapur jail, Abdullah Azam said, “I will only say one thing that oppression will end after March 10 and the oppressor will also be removed from the throne.”

Abdullah, Azam Khan’s younger son, was booked in 43 cases, ranging from theft to extortion and forgery, along with his father.

Abdullah has been granted bail in all of these cases by the lower courts in Rampur.

The release orders following bail were sent to the Sitapur jail by late Saturday afternoon that clearing the way for Abdullah’s release, later in the evening.

Azam’s wife Tazeen Fatima, who is also a co-accused in many of these cases, was released from the Sitapur jail in December 2020.

Meanwhile, Azam Khan, who has more than 86 cases lodged against him on similar charges, is yet to get bail in all of them.

Abdullah won from the Suar constituency on the Samajwadi Party ticket in the 2017 Assembly elections. However, hearing a case against him, the Allahabad High Court in 2019 annulled his election as an Uttar Pradesh MLA on the ground that he was underage and not qualified to fight the poll in 2017.

Trouble for Mohd Azam Khan and his family began in 2017 when the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh.

Just a few months after the election, 10 cases were lodged against Azam Khan in the revenue board by the then district magistrate of Rampur for procuring 104 acres of land belonging to people of Scheduled Caste “against rules”.

In 2019, over 70 cases were lodged against Azam Khan and his family members for forgery, theft, extortion, and other crimes within a few months. The majority of the cases pertained to the encroachment of land that was usurped in the construction of the Jauhar University, of which Azam Khan is the chairman.

Azam Khan was also accused of stealing old books from a government school and keeping them in his library. Acting on the complaint, police raided Mumtaz library located inside Jauhar Ali University and recovered over 2,000 old books from there. Considering the number of cases against him, the district administration also named him as a land mafia in Rampur.

Khan criticised these cases at first but later succumbed to the mounting pressure and repeated court notices. He also tried to get anticipatory bail in many cases but in vain.

Eventually, in February 2020, Azam, his wife, and son Abdullah Azam surrendered before an MP-MLA court in Rampur. On the court’s order, the three were later shifted to Sitapur jail.