Lucknow, Jul 14 (IANS): The Uttar Pradesh government has removed the 'Y'-category security provided to Samajwadi Party National General Secretary and former Minister Mohd. Azam Khan, an official said.
A senior Home department official said that the state level security committee constituted to provide security to ministers, former ministers and VVIPs had said in its report that no justification has been found for maintaining Y-category security of Azam Khan.
On the basis of this report, the order was sent to the Superintendent of Police (SP), Rampur, Ashok Kumar Shukla, on behalf of the State Secretary, Home Affairs (Police), A.V. Rajamouli, the official added.
The SP told journalists that as per the government's recommendations, the policemen engaged in the Y-category security of Azam Khan have been withdrawn.
In February 2023, Azam Khan and his Rampur MLA son Abdullah Azam were sentenced to two years imprisonment by MP/MLA court in Moradabad in a 2008 case.
Thereafter, in May, Azam Khan, his wife and former MP Tanzeen Fatima, and a clerk of the Basic Education Department, Taufeeq Ahmad, were charge sheeted in a case over the alleged use of forged documents for securing recognition of the Rampur Public School -- run by the Jauhar Trust, headed by the Samajwadi Party leader.
The FIR was lodged in 2020.
Since the BJP came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, as many as 84 cases have been registered against Azam Khan in Rampur on various charges.