Senior Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan walked out of Rampur jail a free man on Saturday afternoon. Within minutes, he was back in custody.
The Enforcement Directorate detained the 78-year-old former Uttar Pradesh minister outside the prison gates on October 31, immediately after he was released on bail in an alleged PAN fraud case, officials said. Khan, who had spent more than 11 months in Rampur jail, was taken into custody by a team from the agency's Lucknow zone amid tight security, with central paramilitary personnel and Uttar Pradesh police deployed outside the prison.
Supporters raised slogans as officials drove him away after what witnesses described as a heated argument at the gate.
Two days earlier, on October 29, the Allahabad High Court had suspended the sentence of Khan and his son Abdullah Azam Khan in the alleged dual PAN card case and granted them bail. Khan had been convicted in that case in November 2025 and sentenced to a prison term, and the High Court's order suspended the sentence while his challenge to the conviction is heard. His conviction still stands, which means he remains disqualified from contesting elections.
The Enforcement Directorate's action, however, concerns a separate case. The agency is investigating alleged money laundering involving Khan, the Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Trust and others, in connection with the Mohammad Ali Jauhar University in Rampur, an institution Khan founded and championed during his years as a minister.
The agency alleges that public money was diverted to build the university, and it has provisionally attached the university's land and buildings, valued in reports at around Rs 1,170 crore.
An official of the Enforcement Directorate's Lucknow zonal office told reporters that the agency had apprehended Khan and that, after following arrest procedures, it would arrest him and produce him before the special Prevention of Money Laundering Act court in Ghaziabad. The agency is expected to seek his remand for custodial interrogation when he is produced before that court on Sunday.
Other reports said Khan had already been arrested under an Enforcement Case Information Report, the agency's equivalent of a first information report, registered in 2019.
The money laundering probe draws on a web of underlying cases. The agency has taken cognisance of dozens of Uttar Pradesh police first information reports registered against Khan and his alleged associates. Separately, Rampur police registered a fresh first information report on October 14 at Azeemnagar police station, on the agency's information, concerning alleged unexplained expenditure of Rs 416.14 crore on the construction of the university.
That case was registered under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita dealing with criminal conspiracy and criminal breach of trust, and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Khan's legal journey has been long and winding. He was first sent to jail on February 26, 2020, and released on May 20, 2022, after the Supreme Court granted him interim bail. He was jailed a second time on October 18, 2023, and released on September 23, 2025.
He was sent to jail for a third time on November 17, 2025, after his conviction in the dual PAN card case, and released on October 31, 2026, only to be taken into Enforcement Directorate custody again. His latest stretch in Rampur jail lasted 348 days.
His son Abdullah Azam Khan, a former member of the legislative assembly, was released alongside him on Saturday after the same High Court order. Abdullah had also been convicted in the PAN card case, and his sentence was suspended along with his father's.
The timing of Khan's release and re-arrest carries political significance. Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls early next year, and Khan remains one of the Samajwadi Party's most prominent Muslim faces and a powerful voice in western Uttar Pradesh. Party chief Akhilesh Yadav had met Khan at Rampur jail nine days earlier, on October 22, a visit widely read as a signal of the party's support for its veteran leader.
Speaking to reporters outside the jail on Saturday, Khan was brief. Asked what he had to say about the developments, he questioned what was left to say, a remark that captured the exhaustion of a politician who has spent much of the past six years moving between jail and court.
The Samajwadi Party has described the Enforcement Directorate's action as political vendetta, arguing that Khan was targeted the moment the courts gave him relief. The Bharatiya Janata Party, which governs both Uttar Pradesh and the Centre, has rejected that charge, saying investigating agencies act on evidence and that the courts will decide the merits of each case.
The Enforcement Directorate itself has said little beyond confirming the detention and the plan to produce Khan before the Ghaziabad court.
What happens next will be decided in courtrooms. If the special court grants the agency's request for remand, Khan will remain in custody for interrogation in the money laundering case, even though the High Court's bail in the PAN card case still stands. Bail is granted case by case, and relief in one case does not automatically free a person facing custody in another. Khan would need bail from the special court as well before he could walk free.
The university at the centre of the case is itself a symbol of Khan's career. Built in Rampur over years of political patronage, Mohammad Ali Jauhar University was presented as an institution for the educational uplift of the region's minorities. Its land and buildings are now attached under the anti-money laundering law, and the investigation into how it was financed has become one of the most closely watched cases in Uttar Pradesh.
For Khan's supporters, Saturday was a day of hope followed swiftly by disappointment. They had gathered outside Rampur jail to welcome a leader they regard as a victim of political persecution. Instead, they watched him driven away by another agency, to another court, in another case.
For his critics, the sequence was proof that the law is finally catching up with a politician who wielded enormous power in Rampur for decades. For the courts, the coming days will bring the familiar task of weighing allegations against evidence, and custody against liberty, in a case that shows no sign of ending soon.
(Reporting based on The Hindu, Deccan Herald and The New Indian Express.)