Azam Khan moves Supreme Court over ED detention outside Rampur jail; CJI routes plea to High Court
Senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan has approached the Supreme Court seeking relief after the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) detained him outside Rampur jail on October 31, shortly after he was released on bail in an alleged PAN fraud case.
Making an oral mention before Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, advocate Nizam Pasha, appearing for the 78-year-old politician, said the fresh detention was part of what the Supreme Court itself had earlier described as an "evergreening of cases" by the State against Mr. Khan for political reasons.
"It was an illegal arrest in a seven-year-old FIR. The purpose is to delay his eventual release. The Supreme Court had given him relief the previous time," Mr. Pasha submitted, seeking a hearing during the week.
He told the court that 87 FIRs had been registered against his client and that this was the 88th. The detention, he argued, had been carried out with the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in mind. These are the submissions of counsel and have not been tested in court.
The Chief Justice, however, noted that Mr. Khan's release immediately before the ED detention had followed an order of the Allahabad High Court, and said that the politician ought to approach that court rather than move the apex court directly.
"Have faith in the High Court, it has given him relief. We will relegate this matter to the High Court and request it to take it up without delay," the Chief Justice told the counsel.
Mr. Pasha urged the court to list the petition and then pass whatever order it considered appropriate. "We will list it this week," Chief Justice Kant said.
The exchange was limited to the question of listing and the appropriate forum; the court did not examine the merits of the detention on this occasion. The allegations in the alleged PAN fraud case are yet to be adjudicated, and no finding of guilt has been recorded in the proceedings referred to before the court.
The term "evergreening", as used by counsel, refers to the practice of filing a succession of fresh cases against a person so that custody continues even after release in an earlier matter. Mr. Pasha relied on observations made in earlier proceedings in which the Supreme Court had granted relief to Mr. Khan, a former Uttar Pradesh minister who has faced a series of cases in the State over the past several years.
Under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, the Enforcement Directorate may arrest a person during investigation if it records reasons to believe the person is guilty of an offence under the law. An arrest under the Act does not by itself establish guilt, and a person detained is entitled to seek bail from a competent court.
The sequence of events, as described in court, is that Mr. Khan was granted bail in the PAN-related case and released from Rampur jail on October 31, and was detained by the ED outside the prison premises soon after. The legality of that detention is now a matter the High Court is expected to consider once the petition is placed before it.
The re-direction of the matter to the High Court means that Mr. Khan's immediate remedy will lie with the court that has already granted him relief in the earlier proceedings. The Supreme Court's direction to list the petition this week indicates that it will formally record the request that the High Court take up the matter without delay.
Political parties in Uttar Pradesh have been closely watching the case in the run-up to the State elections. The Samajwadi Party has maintained that the cases against Mr. Khan are politically motivated, a claim the State government has denied in the past. The Enforcement Directorate has not made a public statement on the latest detention as reported in court.
