Jailed Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan has claimed he could be killed in an encounter by Uttar Pradesh police.

“I may be killed in an encounter. Anything can happen to me,” Azam told reporters at the gate of the Rampur district prison on Sunday early morning when the police were shifting him to Sitapur jail.

Lodged at the Rampur jail since October 18 along with his wife Tazeen Fatima and younger son Abdullah Azam in an election fraud case, the government had decided to shift Azam to Sitapur. He was taken out of prison in Rampur around 4.50am and transported in a police van to Sitapur, 240km east of Rampur.

Abdullah was also shifted from there around the same time to the district jail in Hardoi, 210km south of Rampur.

Rajesh Dwivedi, superintendent of police of Rampur, said: “Azam Khan was shifted to Sitapur and Abdullah to Hardoi for security reasons.”

Asked over phone whether there was any security concern over Azam during the shift, Sansar Singh, additional SP of Rampur, told The Telegraph: “There was nothing like that. They were shifted smoothly to Sitapur and Hardoi respectively.”

A court in Rampur had Azam and his son and wife seven years’ imprisonment for forging documents to procure two birth certificates for Abdullah.

Akash Saxena, the incumbent BJP MLA from Rampur, had filed a case against them in 2019 alleging that Abdullah’s date of birth was mentioned as January 1, 1990, in a certificate issued by Lucknow Municipal Authority. The place of birth was shown as Lucknow. However, according to the documents provided for preparation of Abdullah’s Aadhaar Card, he was born in Rampur on January 1, 1993.

The first certificate was submitted with the election affidavit when Abdullah contested the Assembly polls from Suar Tanda in Rampur district in 2017. Saxena had claimed that while Abdullah was underage — 24 years — to contest the Assembly elections, his age was shown as 27 in the affidavit. One should be 25 years old or more to become a candidate in Assembly elections.

“The parents of Abdullah were involved in forging documents when Azam was urban development minister in the Samajwadi Party government between 2012 and 2017,” Saxena had stated in his petition.

There were over two dozen Azam supporters at Sitapur prison’s gate when he reached there. About 10 supporters of Abdullah were at the entry of the Hardoi jail.

Locals said multiple cars carrying the two leaders’ followers tailed the duo’s police vans.