Allahabad HC grants bail to Azam Khan and son in PAN card forgery case but refuses to stay their convictions

Justice Samit Gopal suspended the sentences of Mohd Azam Khan and Mohd Abdullah Azam Khan, who have spent over four years and three and a half years in custody in a fixed-term case, but held that their criminal antecedents left no justifiable reason to stay the convictions that keep them out of the coming Assembly election, and admitted the revisions for final hearing in January 2027.

Mohd Azam Khan and his son Mohd Abdullah Azam Khan will walk out of jail in the Rampur PAN card forgery case, but their convictions, and the electoral disqualification that goes with them, remain in force. In a reserved order delivered on 29 October 2026, Justice Samit Gopal of the Allahabad High Court allowed the father and son's applications for suspension of sentence and bail, on the footing that they face fixed-term sentences and have already spent four years one month and nine days, and three years six months and thirteen days, in custody. In the same order he dismissed their prayer for a stay of conviction, pointing to 92 criminal cases and eight previous convictions against the father and 46 cases and four convictions against the son. The two criminal revisions were admitted and listed for final hearing in the third week of January 2027.

A second PAN card, a different date of birth and a 2017 nomination

The case arises from a First Information Report of 6 December 2019 lodged by Akash Saxena on a typed application to the Superintendent of Police, Rampur, registered as Case Crime No. 980 of 2019. It alleged that Abdullah Azam Khan held PAN card DFOPK614K, issued by the Income Tax Department with his date of birth as 1 January 1993, which matched his high school certificate; that his State Bank of India account and his income tax returns were run on that PAN; but that when he filed his nomination papers for the 34-Swar Assembly constituency as a Samajwadi Party candidate on 24 January 2017, he entered a different PAN, DWAPK7513R, bearing a date of birth of 30 September 1990, against the same bank account. The FIR alleged that, in a conspiracy with his father, he had the second PAN prepared and used it in the nomination to get past the constitutional age bar, and that the nomination was accepted and the Assembly seat obtained. Offences under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code were registered.

On 17 November 2025 the Special Judge (MP/MLA), Court of First Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Rampur, convicted both men in Criminal Case No. 311 of 2022 and sentenced each to seven years' simple imprisonment under Section 467, three years each under Sections 420 and 468, two years under Section 471 and one year under Section 120B, with a fine of Rs 10,000 on each count, all sentences to run concurrently with set-off for time served. Both convicts appealed; the State appealed for enhancement, and Nawab Kazim Khan alias Naved Mian filed a revision seeking the same. The appellate court, the Special Judge (MP/MLA) and Additional Sessions Judge, Court No. 2, Rampur, dismissed the convicts' appeals on 20 April 2026 and, on 23 May 2026, allowed the State's appeal and the revision.

The enhancement was steep. Azam Khan's sentence under Section 467 went from seven years' simple imprisonment to ten years' rigorous imprisonment with a fine of Rs 2 lakh; under Sections 420 and 468 from three years to seven years' rigorous imprisonment with Rs 1 lakh each; under Section 471 to three years with Rs 50,000; and under Section 120B to three years with Rs 50,000. Abdullah's sentence under Section 467 became seven years' rigorous imprisonment with Rs 1 lakh, under Sections 420 and 468 five years' rigorous imprisonment with Rs 75,000 each, and under Sections 471 and 120B two years each with Rs 50,000. All sentences remain concurrent.

Revisions reach Court No. 74 after a Chief Justice nomination

Azam Khan's revision, first filed as Criminal Revision Defective No. 1197 of 2026, was renumbered Criminal Revision No. 3893 of 2026; the trial court records were summoned on 9 June 2026 and received on 14 July 2026. Abdullah's Criminal Revision No. 3685 of 2026 was connected to it by an order of 17 June 2026. After an order of a coordinate bench on 6 August 2026, the Chief Justice nominated both matters to Justice Gopal's bench on 10 August 2026. They were heard with Criminal Revision No. 5514 of 2026, the State's own revision seeking a further enhancement of sentence, in which the court on 14 October 2026 granted the convicts three weeks to file a counter affidavit.

On 14 October 2026 the court heard Abhishek Manu Singhvi and N.I. Jafri, Senior Advocates, assisted by Shashwat Anand, Nizam Pasha, Arif Ali, Ankur Azad, Shashank Tiwari, Shrey, Sadrul Islam Jafri and Saumitra Anand for the revisionists; Anoop Trivedi, Senior Advocate and Additional Advocate General, with Paritosh Kumar Malviya, AGA, for the State; Sharad Sharma for the first informant; and Veer Kumar for the fourth opposite party. Two counter affidavits from the first informant dated 3 August 2026 were taken on record, and because the double jeopardy argument rested on an order of 24 May 2024 in Criminal Revision No. 159 of 2024, Dr Tanzeen Fatima v. State of U.P., the court called for that file. Arguments on the suspension applications concluded on 15 October 2026, Singhvi appearing by video conference, and the order was reserved.

The order records a point of some consequence about how the hearing went. Since the trial court records had arrived, the court repeatedly offered the revisionists the chance to argue the revisions finally. The State and the private respondents said they were ready for a final hearing. Counsel for the convicts declined, insisting that their applications for suspension of sentence and stay of conviction be decided first.

Double jeopardy, age, custody and an election on the horizon

For the revisionists it was argued that no offence was made out, that nobody had been defrauded or deceived, and that the prosecution was barred by double jeopardy because the same document was said to have been used to obtain a passport and Abdullah had been acquitted in that case. They relied on Prem Chandra Singh v. State of U.P., (2020) 3 SCC 54, T.P. Gopalakrishnan v. State of Kerala, (2022) 14 SCC 323, and P. Manikandan v. CBI, 2024 SCC OnLine 3808, for the proposition that where the substratum of two FIRs is the same and the accused is acquitted in one, he cannot be prosecuted for the other. The revisions, they said, had a fair chance of success. Azam Khan, aged about 74, had been in custody for four years one month and nine days including remission, as per a custody certificate of 29 May 2026, against a maximum sentence of ten years; Abdullah for three years six months and thirteen days as per a certificate of 30 May 2026, against a maximum of seven years. Omprakash Sahni v. Jai Shankar Chaudhary, (2023) 6 SCC 123, and Asif alias Pasha v. State of U.P., 2025 SCC OnLine SC 1644, were cited for bail in fixed-term cases.

On antecedents, the affidavit in support of the stay application disclosed 93 criminal cases against Azam Khan, with acquittals in four and bail in the rest, and 19 further cases that had ended without conviction. For Abdullah it disclosed 46 cases: acquittals in two, the present case, bail in the others, one appeal pending in the High Court and one conviction of two years under appeal with bail. For the stay of conviction the revisionists cited Navjot Singh Sidhu v. State of Punjab, (2007) 2 SCC 574, Naranbhai Bhikhabhai Kachchadia v. State of Gujarat, (2024) 2 SCC 239, Lok Prahari v. Election Commission of India, (2018) 18 SCC 114, Rahul Gandhi v. Purnesh Ishwarbhai Modi, (2024) 2 SCC 595, and Afjal Ansari v. State of U.P., (2024) 2 SCC 187, and asked the court to take a lenient view because the conviction carried a disqualification that would keep both men out of the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly elections, an irreparable loss.

The State, the first informant and Vijay Vikram Singh for the fourth opposite party opposed both prayers. The second PAN card, they said, was forged to change Abdullah's date of birth so that he could contest; the second date of birth was declared on oath by both father and son in affidavits filed with the nomination, signed, notarised and presented to the District Election Officer, which fixed their presence and active role. Azam Khan, as a minister in the State, had influenced agencies under his control so that the passport, PAN card and birth certificate were altered, though the educational records could not be. The double jeopardy plea, they argued, could be examined only at the final hearing, not on an application for suspension. They cited State (NCT of Delhi) v. Navjot Sandhu alias Afsan Guru, 2005 SCC OnLine SC 1132, and Ajay Agarwal v. Union of India, 1993 (3) SCC 609, for the rule that conspiracy is itself a substantive offence and every act done in its pursuit a separate one, and Yakub Abdul Razak Memon v. State of Maharashtra, 2013 (13) SCC 1. Relying on Afjal Ansari, they said that a disqualification under the Representation of the People Act, 1951 creates no automatic entitlement to a stay; the court must balance prejudice against public interest, and a stay of conviction is the exception, not the rule.

Why bail followed but a stay of conviction did not

On suspension of sentence, Justice Gopal needed little space. The revisions are pending, the trial court records have arrived, the case is one of a fixed term of sentence with maxima of ten years for the father and seven for the son, and the two had been in custody for the periods certified. Looking to the nature of the occurrence, the period of detention and the fixed-term character of the sentence, the court found it a fit case for bail. Both men are to be released on a personal bond with two sureties each in the like amount to the satisfaction of the court concerned, and half of the fine imposed by the appellate court is to be deposited forthwith. The trial court is to send copies of the bonds to the High Court for its record.

The stay of conviction was treated very differently. The court said the law is trite: criminal antecedents, the gravity of the offences and the wider social impact must all be weighed. It set out at length its own decision in Vikram Singh Saini v. State of U.P., 2022 SCC OnLine All 773, which had refused a stay sought to escape disqualification under Section 8 of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, holding that the offences attracting disqualification are those that threaten the core values of democracy, that the power to stay a conviction is to be used only in rare cases, and that a plea of disqualification is by itself no ground. The Supreme Court had dismissed the special leave petition against that order on 6 February 2023. The court drew on Navjot Singh Sidhu for the settled position, traced through Rama Narang v. Ramesh Narang and Ravikant S. Patil v. Sarvabhouma S. Bagali, that Section 389(1) of the Code permits a stay of conviction but only in exceptional cases where the applicant shows the court the irreversible consequences that would follow, and on Public Interest Foundation v. Union of India, (2019) 3 SCC 224, where the Supreme Court, quoting K. Prabhakaran v. P. Jayarajan, said that “Those who break the law should not make the law” and that persons with criminal antecedents should be kept at bay from politics.

Then came the figures that decided the application. On the revisionists' own showing, the court recorded, Azam Khan is involved in 92 criminal cases. He has been convicted in eight: two by courts of Session and six by Magistrates, and in two of the Magistrate convictions his appeals have already been dismissed. Eighty-one cases are pending against him. Abdullah has been convicted by Magistrates in four matters, with appeals dismissed in two, and has 44 cases pending. The appellate court had noted the same in paragraph 26 of its judgment. Given these antecedents, the previous convictions and the sheer number of cases, the court held that “no justifiable reason is coming forward for entertaining the plea for suspension of conviction”. It was not a fit case for a stay of conviction for either man, and the prayers were dismissed. The order does not decide the double jeopardy argument; that remains for the final hearing.

Order

In Criminal Misc. Suspension of Sentence Application No. 2 of 2026 in each revision, the prayer for suspension of sentence and bail was allowed: Mohd Azam Khan and Mohd Abdullah Azam Khan are to be released on bail on furnishing a personal bond with two sureties each in the like amount to the satisfaction of the court concerned, half of the fine imposed by the appellate court to be deposited forthwith, with copies of the bonds to be transmitted to the High Court. The prayer for stay of conviction was dismissed for both. Criminal Revision Nos. 3893 and 3685 of 2026 were admitted, the hearing expedited and the matters listed in the third week of January 2027 for final hearing, with the office directed to detag Criminal Revision No. 159 of 2024 and its connected matters. The State's revision for further enhancement, Criminal Revision No. 5514 of 2026, remains pending. The matter was heard on 14 and 15 October 2026 and reserved on 15 October 2026.