Prayagraj, Oct 29: The Allahabad High Court on Thursday granted bail to Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan and his son Mohd Abdullah Azam Khan in the alleged fake passport and dual PAN cards case.
The court also suspended the sentence of the former Uttar Pradesh minister and his son — a former legislator — but refused to stay the conviction.
Justice Samit Gopal passed the order allowing their applications seeking suspension of sentence.
Following bail in the case, the father-son duo is likely to walk out of jail.
The court had reserved its judgment on October 15 after hearing senior advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and NI Jafri, along with Advocate Shashwat Anand, appearing for Azam Khan and Abdullah Khan.
The state was represented by Senior Advocate Anoop Trivedi and Advocate Paritosh Kumar Malviya.
Azam and Abdullah Khan have filed criminal revision petitions before the high court challenging their conviction and sentence in the alleged dual PAN card case.
In November last year, additional chief judicial magistrate of the Rampur court had pronounced them guilty of forgery, cheating, using forged documents and criminal conspiracy.
The case stems from an FIR lodged in 2019 by BJP leader Akash Saxena, now an MLA, alleging that Abdullah Khan had two PAN cards containing different dates of birth and gained undue benefits through their use.
According to the prosecution, Abdullah initially obtained a PAN card from the Income Tax Department showing January 1, 1993 as date of birth.
This matched the date recorded in his school and high school certificates. This PAN was also used to operate a bank account and file income tax returns.
However, it is alleged that for the purposes of contesting the 2017 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Abdullah altered his bank passbook and also changed the PAN details and filed the forged copy of the passbook while submitting his nomination papers.
The second PAN recorded his date of birth as September 30, 1990. This alleged fabrication was made so that he could be eligible to contest the polls (which requires a minimum age of 25 years). The prosecution argued that Abdullah had done so in conspiracy with his father Azam Khan.
Further, the prosecution has claimed that the bank account mentioned in the nomination papers was neither linked to nor operated through the second PAN. (PTI)
