The Income Tax Department on Wednesday conducted raids at over 30 premises in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh linked to Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan and his associates as a part of a tax evasion probe, reported PTI quoting official sources. The searches were conducted in Rampur, Lucknow, Saharanpur, Ghaziabad, and Meerut in Uttar Pradesh apart from some premises in the neighbouring state of Madhya Pradesh. As per the report, the raids pertain to some trusts run by Khan and his family members.
Regency Public School and Regency Institute of Management & Technology in UP's Sitapur were also searched by the I-T department as part of the probe against the SP heavyweight.
Searches were also conducted out on the premises of another SP leader Nasir Khan, who is said to be close to Khan, as per a Hindustan Times report.
While the income tax officials have not given any details about the raid, the HT report that the searches are being conducted in connection with the Al Jauhar Trust, headed by Khan.
In July this year, the former Samajwadi Party MP was sentenced to two years in prison by an MP/MLA court in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur in a case of inflammatory speech during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
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The case against him was filed for allegedly making a provocative speech targeting the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, the then Rampur district election officer, and the Election Commission at a rally in the Dhamora area on April 8, 2019, during the Lok Sabha polls.
The SP leader was convicted by an MP-MLA court last year in another hate speech case which was registered against him after his address at a public meeting in Khatanagaria village of the Milak Kotwali area in 2019. He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment, following which he was disqualified from the UP assembly.