Ghaziabad: Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Mohammad Azam Khan was on Sunday sent to 14 days of judicial custody a day after being arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a Jauhar University-linked money laundering case.
The order was passed by the Ghaziabad MP-MLA Court, which directed that Khan will remain in judicial custody until November 13.
Speaking to reporters, the SP leaders’ lawyer, Danish Ali, said: “Today, Azam Khan has been remanded to judicial custody. We argued that since this is a 2019 case, the authorities could have taken action through a B-Warrant when he was already in custody. There has also been a violation of Section 19.”
“The ED has sought his custody to further interrogate him,” he added.
The Samajwadi Party leader’s arrest by the ED on Saturday came close to the provisional attachment of land and buildings belonging to Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur district, valued at Rs 426.46 crore, in connection with the money laundering probe involving the Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust, Azam Khan, and others.
The fresh trouble for Azam Khan came in the backdrop of a short-lived relief offered to him and his son Abdullah Khan by the Allahabad High Court, which suspended their sentence in the dual PAN card case and also granted them bail on Thursday.
In the money laundering case, the ED attached assets of the University that have a current estimated market value of around Rs 1,170 crore.
The university campus, located at Jauhar Nagar in Rampur’s Singhankhera village, is owned by the Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust, which was founded and is controlled by Azam Khan, who also serves as the institution’s honorary Chancellor, said the ED.
The investigation stems from 26 FIRs registered at Azeem Nagar police station in Rampur, alleging that agricultural land belonging to farmers was forcibly acquired for the university.
The ED said enquiries by the district administration also found that nearly 34 acres of enemy property at Singhankhera village had allegedly been occupied for the university despite the cancellation of the land lease. The land has since been recovered by the Custodian of Enemy Property through the district administration.
(IANS)
