\Azam Khan Fears Encounter Killing by UP Police, Shifted to Different Jail

Leader of the Samajwadi Party Azam Khan, who is incarcerated, has stated that he might be killed by Uttar Pradesh police.

"I may get murdered in a confrontation. "Anything can happen to me," Azam told reporters early on Sunday morning as the police were transferring him to Sitapur jail from the Rampur district prison.

Azam, who has been detained at Rampur jail since October 18 in connection with an election fraud case alongside his younger son Abdullah Azam and wife Tazeen Fatima, has been relocated to Sitapur by the government. Around 4.50 am, he was released from Rampur Prison and driven to Sitapur, which is located 240 km east of Rampur, in a police vehicle.

Around the same time, Abdullah was transferred from there to the district jail located 210 kilometers south of Rampur in Hardoi.

Rampur superintendent of police Rajesh Dwivedi stated: "For security reasons, Abdullah was moved to Hardoi and Azam Khan to Sitapur."

Sansar Singh, an additional SP of Rampur, said to The Telegraph over the phone when asked if there had been any security concerns about Azam during the shift: "There was nothing like that." They were moved to Sitapur and Hardoi, respectively, without any problems.

Azam, along with his son and spouse, were sentenced to seven years in prison by a Rampur court for fabricating paperwork in order to get two birth certificates for Abdullah.

The current BJP MLA for Rampur, Akash Saxena, filed a lawsuit against them in 2019 on the grounds that Abdullah's birthdate was listed as January 1, 1990, on a document from the Lucknow Municipal Authority. The birthplace of Lucknow was displayed. In contrast, Abdullah's Aadhaar Card preparation paperwork state that he was born in Rampur on January 1, 1993.

The initial certificate was filed alongside the election affidavit during Abdullah's 2017 Assembly campaign from Suar Tanda in the Rampur district. Saxena had stated that although Abdullah was 24 years old and too young to run in the Assembly elections, his affidavit stated that he was 27 years old. To run in an Assembly election, a person must be at least 25 years old.

In his plea, Saxena had claimed that "the parents of Abdullah were involved in forging documents when Azam was urban development minister in the Samajwadi Party government between 2012 and 2017."

When he arrived to the gate of Sitapur Prison, there were more than twenty supporters of Azam. There were about ten Abdullah supporters at the jail's entrance in Hardoi.

According to locals, the two leaders' followers were tailing their police vans in various cars.