SC relief for Azam Khan in enemy property case
Stays HC’s bail condition related to Jauhar University land
The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Allahabad high court’s bail conditions imposed on Samajwadi Party MLA Azam Khan directing the district magistrate of Rampur for taking possession of land attached to the Jauhar University campus in an alleged grabbing of enemy property case.
Referring to the high court order in which the court has itself observed that “the present order in this bail application may sound like a decree of the civil court dealing and deciding the title over the property”, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, heading a vacation bench also comprising Justice Bela M. Trivedi, said, “Prima facie, the high court, while imposing conditions for the grant of bail,
has exceeded the settled parameters governing the exercise of the jurisdiction under Section 439 of the Code of Criminal Procedure 1973.” The stay on the HC order will operate till the next date of hearing on July 14, 2022.
The court stayed the part of the high court order relating to the condition directing the district magistrate to hold the measurement of the “disputed” 13.842 hectares of land falling under village Singhan Khera, Pargana, and tehsil Sadar of district Rampur.
While ordering the measurement of the 13.842 hectares of land which is “centre of dispute”, the HC had directed the district magistrate, who also happens to be a “representative of custodian/administrator of evacuee/enemy property”, to thereafter “raise a boundary wall and barbed wire around it and take the actual physical possession of the property in dispute on behalf of administrator of evacuee property Mumbai latest by June 30, 2022.”
Issuing a notice on Mr Khan’s petition against the high court order, the court posted the matter for further hearing on July 14, 2022.
The HC by its May 10, 2022, order had granted bail to Mr Khan in a case related to wrongful possession of the land belonging to the Waqf Board.