Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh: Bearing a name that means ‘free’, Azad Khan of Mainpuri instead spent 25 prime years of his life behind bars, serving a life sentence handed by a special court despite lack of credible evidence linking him to a robbery in 2000.
He was finally acquitted by the Allahabad High Court last December but spent another agonising month in jail for want of Rs 7,000 to execute his bail bond.
Azad stepped out of jail last week, on the night of 23 January, when a Bareilly-based NGO, Chhoti Si Asha, executed the bail bond.
“I was innocent, but it took a lifetime to prove it. Now I want compensation and a job from the government,” the 51-year-old told ThePrint.
Over the years, he lost his family: his parents died and his siblings went their separate ways. Members of his family told ThePrint that Azad was falsely implicated in the case.
According to his brother Mastan, Azad was a victim of village rivalry and was not among the robbers who attacked the home of Om Prakash on the night of 29 October, 2000, in Byonti Katra village of Mainpuri.
“My brother is returning home after 25 years. Our pain continues. He is now over 50 years old but his undernourished state prevents him from performing physical work. He has no spouse, no residence, and no agricultural land for farming activities,” Mastan said.
“The government should provide him housing and property through its programmes that help people in extreme poverty.”
Sohail Khan, Azad’s nephew, also claimed that Azad was falsely implicated in the robbery. He said Azad is the youngest of five brothers and worked as a tailor in Delhi when he was arrested in 2000 and charged with dacoity.
He said the family spent a lot on legal fees to get him released but kept losing the case. Finally, they stopped trying.
25-year ordeal
The trial against Azad began in the special court in May 2001. The prosecution claimed that Azad had participated in the robbery, but the evidence was limited to a single “confession” of the accused; there were no witnesses or fingerprints and no weapon was recovered.
In February 2002, the special judge sentenced Azad to life imprisonment under Sections 395 (robbery) and 397 (using a deadly weapon during a robbery) of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code (IPC). He was initially put in Fatehgarh Jail and later transferred to Bareilly Central Jail.
Azad appealed against the verdict in the Allahabad High Court. The case dragged on for more than two decades.
Finally, on 19 December, 2025, Justices J.J. Munir and Sanjiv Kumar determined that the trial court had failed to conduct proper evidence evaluation in the case before convicting and awarding the life sentence.
The HC found that the prosecution failed to present evidence which would prove Azad’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt, except for his confession and police constable testimony which did not meet legal standards under Section 313 of the erstwhile Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC). The court acquitted Azad and ordered his release.
However, he continued to remain in prison till last week because Section 473A of the CrPC requires a person who has been acquitted to furnish a bail bond and sureties, to be able to be released from custody.
According to Azad’s advocate Mukul Kumar, the jail superintendent said that he needed the bail bond to release him and that Azad had no money to pay for the same.
When it looked like all hope was lost, the NGO intervened. The organisation’s Parul Malik and Rupali Gupta deposited Rs 7,000 for the bail bond, completing the necessary paperwork. Azad Khan was finally transferred to brother Mastan’s custody at midnight.
Kumar said many prisoners suffer incarceration due to insufficient evidence and inability to receive adequate legal assistance and timely hearing of their cases. Legal experts believe that a compensation policy needs to exist for those wrongly convicted. The Supreme Court has earlier ordered compensation in similar cases.
In the wake of his release, Azad is avoiding attention and his relatives said he is looking for government aid to build a house on his vacant land in his village.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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Such things are common in a socialist country like ours where the corrupt and inefficient state can’t provide speedy justice. The money necessary to ensure world-class judicial services is unavailable because it is spent on socialism. In Indian politics, socialism fetches votes not judicial services. And to add insult to the injury, we have our world-famous police which is known for corruption and incompetency.