A district court in Rampur convicted Samajwadi party leader Azam Khan on Saturday. The court has found the leader guilty in a 2019 hate-speech case registered against him and sentenced him to 2 years in prison.
Azam Khan was accused of making derogatory remarks against Rampur district magistrate Aunjaneya Kumar Singh and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
After the video clips of Azam Khan’s remarks went viral on social media, Rampur district’s assistant development officer Anil Kumar Chauhan registered a complaint against the leader at the Shahjad Nagar police station.
The development has come soon after the SP leader was disqualified from the Uttar Pradesh state assembly after getting convicted in October 2022 in an another hate speech case. The conviction was later overturned by a Rampur court and Azam Khan was acquitted in the case, but the acquittal did not help the leader as he and his son Abdullah Khan were also convicted in a case dating back to 2008 on the grounds of assaulting public servants, who stopped the leaders cars for checking.
Azam Khan has more than 80 cases registered against himself over various major and minor felonies. He also spent 27 months in prison before the Supreme Court granted him bail in all the cases. He walked out of the jail in May 2022.
Azam Khan has previously served as a cabinet minister in the Akhilesh Yadav led Samajwadi party government that ruled the state of UP between 2012 to 2017 and since then has lost two consecutive elections against the Yogi Adityanath led BJP government becoming the first party in more than 30 years to return to the power in Uttar Pradesh.
