On Friday, the income tax department raid on senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan’s Rampur home in Uttar Pradesh entered its third day. The department searched more than 30 places on Wednesday in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as part of its investigation into Khan and those connected to him for tax evasion. On Wednesday, teams of IT personnel traveled to Rampur, Meerut, Lucknow, Ghaziabad, Saharanpur, and Sitapur in order to raid various locations connected to the Samajwadi Party leader.
On Thursday, searches were also carried out at Khan’s Rampur home. Azam Khan won a seat in the Rampur Sadar constituency as an MLA. Khan was declared ineligible to serve in the House by the state Assembly Secretariat earlier in October as a result of a court’s three-year prison term for hate speech. Khan was charged in April 2019 after making serious accusations during an election meeting against Rampur-based administrative officials, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Khan was arrested during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections for inciting violence during a public speech in the village of Khatanagaria in the Milak Kotwali region.
Azam Khan had previously been granted interim bail by the Allahabad High Court in May 2022 in connection with a case involving the illegal possession of Waqf board property land.On a Janata Party (Secular) ticket, Azam Khan won the 1980 assembly election from Rampur to launch his political career. Both the Akhilesh and Mulayam Singh Yadav administrations had him as a minister. Since then, 81 cases have been filed in Rampur against the longtime SP leader on various counts, including land grabbing, cheating, criminal trespass, and hate speech.