Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday met party veteran Azam Khan in Rampur jail and said later that “no political family in the country has suffered as much”.
“No family in the country, particularly a political family, has faced as much atrocities and injustice as Azam Khan’s family,” Akhilesh said after meeting the minority leader, who is in Rampur jail since November 2025 for procuring two permanent account numbers for his son Abdullah Azam. Abdullah is also lodged in the same prison.
“Azam Khan was, is and will always be there. False cases have been registered against him and he has been kept in jail for a long time with ulterior motives,” the SP chief and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister told reporters.
Booked in recent years on charges of land grabbing, intimidation, forgery and money laundering, SP general secretary and founding member Azam has been in jail for 11 months in connection with the PAN case. Earlier, he had had two jail stints — for 27 months and 23 months.
Azam is widely seen as the SP’s only credible Muslim face. Political observers feel the SP could find it difficult to woo Muslims before the Assembly elections next year without Azam’s help.
Azam’s wife and former SP MP Tazeen Fatima has often publicly said that the family was fighting a “a lonely battle”.
Several probe agencies of the state and the Centre, including the police, income tax department and the Enforcement Directorate, have been conducting inquiries against Maulana Ali Jauhar University in Rampur, of which Azam is the founder and lifelong chancellor.
The ED recently interrogated Azam in jail to track the university’s sources of funding.
“The BJP doesn’t respect education and knowledge. Our first priority is to dislodge them from power in the state,” Akhilesh said on Thursday.
“The conspiracy hatched to destroy the university is such that perhaps no government, not even a dictatorial one, has ever caused such devastation in the field of education. False cases have been filed against him,” he added.
Akhilesh landed at the Jauhar University helipad, where Azam’s family members and party workers received him.
Akhilesh was on the jail premises for about an hour and said later that he had an “emotional meeting” with Azam. “All I would say at this stage is that the truth can’t be imprisoned forever. Those who conspire against others live in constant fear of the truth coming out one day. We hope that the people will know that truth soon,” Akhilesh said.
The BJP slammed Akhilesh for visiting Azam, claiming that meeting jailed party leaders who promote “appeasement and lawlessness” had exposed the SP’s priorities.
Taking to X, BJP national general secretary and Uttar Pradesh in-charge Vinod Tawde alleged that the SP planned to make Azam the home minister if it won the Assembly elections.
“Riots and lawlessness in the state. PDA’s dream will never be fulfilled!” he said, referring to the acronym for Pichhda (OBCs), Dalit, Alpsankhyak (minorities). Akhilesh has been trying to court these communities assiduously.
Referring to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots, Tawde said: “The people of Uttar Pradesh remember how the previous Samajwadi Party government plunged western Uttar Pradesh and the entire state into an era of riots and lawlessness.”
He claimed that the SP’s “dream of making Azam Khan — a mastermind of the riots — the state’s home minister would derail Uttar Pradesh’s development and lead it towards destruction”.
“This dream will never be fulfilled,” Tawde added.