Supreme Court asks Allahabad HC to give Azam Khan priority hearing

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Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan. | Photo Credit: ANI

The Supreme Court on Thursday (November 5, 2026) advised senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan to approach the Allahabad High Court against his arrest by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) outside Rampur Jail on October 31 and his subsequent remand to judicial custody by a CBI judge on November 1.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant requested the High Court to take up the case on a priority basis on November 16.

The Bench allowed Mr. Khan’s counsel, senior advocate Kapil Sibal and advocate Nizam Pasha, liberty to amend the petition to include additional prayers for relief.

The apex court clarified that it has not said anything on the merits of the case.

“The petitioner, Mohd. Azam Khan, aged about 78 years, a ten-time Member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly from Rampur, a former Cabinet Minister and Leader of Opposition in the State of Uttar Pradesh, and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha and of the 17th Lok Sabha, is constrained to approach the Supreme Court … on account of blatant illegality of his arrest including the manner and timing and the gross abuse of process and mala fide exercise of power whereby the machinery of criminal justice system is used for political ends to keep an Opposition leader indefinitely in incarceration particularly on account of the approaching Assembly Elections in the State of Uttar Pradesh,” Mr. Khan’s petition said.

Mr. Sibal said the ED has even accounted “goats and cows as proceeds of crime” under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

The senior counsel said Mr. Khan was subjected to a “series of politically motivated cases foisted upon him, and he was taken into custody in these cases one after the other in a manner calculated to ensure his indefinite incarceration”.

Ever since the government had changed in Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Khan said, he had been fighting an “ever-greening” of cases.

At one point of time, the Supreme Court had intervened in 2022 to exercise its powers under Article 142 to grant him interim bail when a fresh case was filed after he got bail in the last 87 FIRs.

“Most recently, just as Mr. Khan secured an order of suspension of sentence from the High Court of Allahabad in the last remaining case in which he was incarcerated, and was released from custody pursuant to bail bonds being furnished on October 31, he was illegally arrested by ED in a seven-year-old ECIR, from the gate of District Jail Rampur as soon as he walked out upon his release,” the petition said.

Mr. Sibal said “no arrest memo, written grounds of arrest or reasons to believe were given to him. The arrest is the latest link in an unbroken chain. Since 2017, the Petitioner has been made an accused in 95 criminal cases so far now”.

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