Though the bench initially asked Khan why he did not move the Allahabad HC, it agreed to list the matter for hearing.

NEW DELHI: SP leader and ten time MLA Azam Khan on Monday moved Supreme Court challenging the ED decision to arrest him on stepping out of Rampur jail after Allahabad HC granted him bail in the last of the 95 cases, which have been slapped on him after BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017.Advocate Mohd Nizamuddin Pasha told a bench of CJI Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana that the arrest by ED in a 2019 case, in which FIR itself was registered 13 years after the allegations about land purchase transactions fo Jauhar University from farmers, was illegal.Though the bench initially asked Khan why he did not move the Allahabad HC, it agreed to list the matter for hearing. Khan said he was forced to move the SC because 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 UP.”Seeking invocation of SC’s exclusive Article 142 powers for grant of interim bail, Khan said since 2017, he has been made an accused in 95 criminal cases, including the ED case. He has been acquitted in six cases, and three cases were closed after his complicity could not be proved.“He has been convicted in six; in four of these his sentence has been suspended and/or his conviction stayed, and in the other two, the sentence of two years has been undergone. The remaining 80 cases are pending trial. The clear pattern that emerges is that whenever the Petitioner is about to be released, a fresh case is registered or revived, and he is sought to be kept behind bars,” Khan alleged.The 78-year-old petitioner, who had also been a UP cabinet minister as member of both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, complained that he was illegally arrested in a 7-year-old ECIR from the gate of District Jail Rampur on Oct 31 without providing him with the arrest memo or written grounds and reasons for arrest.

Khan said, while being lodged in Rampur Jail, ED had questioned him relating to the case and recorded his statements under PMLA and hence there was no basis for the ED to arrest him against and seek judicial custody. “Timing of my arrest is wholly mala fide and politically motivated,” the SP leader said, claiming that he suffered from serious kidney, urinary and other age-related ailments. And that he has spent more than 5 years in prison since Feb 2020.