New Delhi : In more trouble for controversial Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan, the ED has launched a money laundering probe following an FIR that alleged that Mohammad Ali Jauhar University run by him in Rampur district of Uttar Pradesh was built over a plot of land taken in violation of the enemy property law.Khan, a Lok Sabha MP from Rampur and a former state cabinet minister under Akhilesh Yadav regime in the State, has already been booked by the ED under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), based on at least 26 criminal FIRs filed by the local police on charges of land grab and extortion.The university under the ED scanner was established in 2006 with Khan as its founder and chancellor. An estimated 3,000 students are enrolled in the university spread over an area of 121 hectares. The ‘enemy property’ in this case is located in Singan Khera Tehsil of the Rampur district and it belongs to Pakistani national Imamuddin Qureshi. The district magistrate or the collector is the deputy custodian of an ‘enemy property’ in a district.Enemy properties are the immovable assets left behind by people who migrated to Pakistan after the Partition. According to data, there are about 9,280 such properties left behind by Pakistani nationals. Such properties are regulated under the Enemy Property Act.If the allegation of land grab and violation of the Enemy Property Act are established, the university campus can be soon attached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, sources said.The ED’s Lucknow zone has sought information from the Rampur district administration about the title and other information about the land on which the university is situated. The agency has also summoned 25 entities and individuals, over the next week, who had complained that the university, its officials and main promoter Azam Khan had flouted the Enemy Property Act to grab land by projecting it as a Waqf property to set up the university.The ED has launched a parallel probe under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) into the university issue and is looking into the approvals, mutation of land and funds sourced by the university to allegedly grab the ‘enemy property’ land in an illegal manner in purported connivance of Government officials.The ED has written to the higher education department of the Uttar Pradesh government to share all documents related to approvals and sanctions given to the university, to take forward its criminal probe under PMLA and FEMA.The Rampur district administration has registered an FIR into the alleged illegal deal on Thursday. Besides Khan, the registrar of the university, the Waqf board Imam and the then official of the Rampur municipal corporation S M Tariq have been named in the FIR as accused. Khan’s name was also uploaded on an online list of “land mafias” by the district administration recently.
