The case was registered by the Delhi Police after the Crime Branch team attempted to arrest Shabaz Khan, a person accused in another case. According to the police, Amanatullah Khan is accused of helping Shabaz Khan, a proclaimed offender in an attempt-to-murder case, escape from custody.
NEW DELHI: On February 13, 2025, a Delhi court granted protection from arrest to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Amanatullah Khan till February 24 in connection with an alleged attack on a Delhi Police team in Jamia Nagar on February 10.
The court’s decision came after hearing Khan’s anticipatory bail application, in which he was accused of leading a mob that allegedly attacked a Crime Branch team of the Delhi Police.
The case was registered by the Delhi Police after the Crime Branch team attempted to arrest Shabaz Khan, a person accused in another case. According to the police, Amanatullah Khan is accused of helping Shabaz Khan, a proclaimed offender in an attempt-to-murder case, escape from custody.
Special judge Jitendra Singh, who was handling the case, granted interim protection to the MLA and ordered him to join the investigation whenever directed by the investigating officer. The judge also instructed the police to present all the documents, excluding any CCTV footage, to the court on February 24.
Khan’s lawyer, Rajat Bharadwaj, said,
“The court has granted interim protection until February 24. The notice was issued to us for joining the investigation, and we are joining it today. The court has asked the prosecution to file a proper reply.”
Following the court’s order, Amanatullah Khan himself spoke out. He said,
“Everything is in the court, I will say everything there. I will join the investigation at 5 pm this evening.”
Amanatullah Khan has strongly denied the charges against him and accused the Delhi Police of falsely implicating him to cover up their own mistake. According to the AAP leader, the person being pursued by the police team was already out on anticipatory bail, granted by a Saket court in 2018. Khan claims that he was at the spot to check on some non-functioning temporary pumps when he saw some individuals in plain clothes harassing a person.
“I was asked to save that person who, I was told, was a resident of the area. I do not have any close relations with that person. When I asked the locals, I got to know that those people (in plainclothes) were threatening him,”
Khan wrote in a letter to Delhi Police Commissioner Sanjay Arora.
Khan further alleged that the individuals in plainclothes refused to show their identities when asked. He claims that these people left the area after the person they were harassing showed them a court order.
“I was about to lodge a complaint against the people in plainclothes who claimed to be from the police for behaving illegally. But, in order to cover up their wrongdoing, they made baseless allegations by distorting and misrepresenting the facts,”
Khan added in his statement.
Amanatullah Khan had successfully retained his seat in the 2025 Delhi assembly elections. He won from the Okhla constituency by a large margin, defeating BJP’s Manish Choudhary by 23,639 votes. Shafia ur-Rehman Khan from Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM party came in third with 39,558 votes, which was almost 27,000 more than Congress candidate Ariba Khan.
