Dual PAN card case: SP leader Azam Khan, son get 7-year jail term for forgery

In fresh trouble for Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan and his son Abdullah Khan, an Uttar Pradesh court on Monday sentenced both of them to seven years of imprisonment for the offence of possessing two PAN cards with different Dates of Birth (DOB), a lawyer said. 

The Special MP-MLA Court in Rampur held Abdullah Khan guilty of getting a second PAN card made with a wrong date of birth to increase his age on record, making him eligible to contest election.

After the Special Court’s decision in a packed courtroom, the father-son duo was taken into custody.

The prosecution succeeded in proving in court that Abdullah Khan, a former MLA, indulged in the forgery to qualify for contesting an election and Azam Khan was part of the larger conspiracy.

The prosecution said that Abdullah was underage and did not meet the requirement for a minimum age to contest an election. To increase his age in records he used a fake DOB and got a second PAN card made.

The verdict comes as a setback for Azam Khan who had recently stepped out of jail in another matter.

The complaint in the dual PAN card case against Abdullah Khan was filed in 2019 by a local leader Akash Kumar Saxena.

He had alleged fraud, forgery and criminal conspiracy in his complaint given to Civil Lines Police Station on December 6, 2019.

Saxena alleged that one of Abdullah’s PAN cards recorded his DOB as January 1, 1993, and the other mentioned September 30, 1990.

The complaint said that forged documents were used to prepare the PAN cards that were used for electoral purposes and filing income tax documents.

Earlier, the Supreme Court on November 6 dismissed a plea filed by Abdullah Khan seeking the quashing of an FIR against him for allegedly using forged documents to obtain a passport.

A Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and Prashant Kumar Mishra, upholding the Allahabad High Court’s order that had refused to quash the FIR, said: "We are not inclined to interfere. However, we make it clear that the trial court is at liberty to decide all the issues without being influenced by the order of the High Court."

During the hearing, the Justice Sundresh-headed Bench observed: "Have faith in the trial court. Let it be decided in the trial court. Why should we interfere now when the trial is already over?"

Earlier, the Allahabad High Court had dismissed Abdullah Khan’s plea to quash the FIR, observing that the offences of obtaining a forged birth certificate and later using it to secure a passport were "distinct and different acts".

Abdullah Khan was earlier convicted in another case for allegedly procuring a false birth certificate using fabricated documents. He argued that since the passport was issued on the basis of the same forged certificate, the subsequent prosecution amounted to double jeopardy.