The Delhi High Court has reserved order on the bail plea of senior All Parties Hurriyat Conference leader Shabbir Ahmad Shah, who has been languishing in New Delhi’s notorious Tihar Jail in a fake case lodged by the National Investigation Agency in 2017.  According to Kashmir Media Service, Shabbir Ahmad Shah had moved the High Court against an order of the special NIA court refusing bail to him. Division bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur reserved an order after taking the list of cases against Shabbir Ahmad Shah on record. 

It was submitted that there were 24 fake cases against him, he has been charged in 18 cases. Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves appeared for the petitioner Shabbir Ahmad Shah. He moved the High Court in 2023. The trial court dismissed his earlier bail plea on July 7, 2023.  Earlier in 2023, a notice was issued to NIA. The counsel for the petitioner has submitted that it is a fresh bail application. He has been in custody since 2017. The charge sheet has been filed against the petitioner. 

It was submitted that the trial court judge had erroneously declined to grant bail to the appellant.  It is also submitted that the trial Court ignored the complete lack of material against the appellant, the prolonged period of custody undergone, and that no criminality with respect to the commission of the offence is assigned to the appellant. There is not a single criminal act that can be attributed to the appellant. 

It was also submitted that the Appellant is a reputed political leader in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, having founded the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party in 1998 with the objectives of seeking cooperation of people from within and outside the territory, to inculcate brotherhood, friendship and goodwill, cultivate religious tolerance, regional and ethnic cooperation and interaction. 

The plea stated that the Appellant finds no mention in the main chargesheet and the first supplementary chargesheet where all the allegations aforementioned have been stated and the NIA has shown the offences that have allegedly occurred as a result of the said conspiracy. The Investigation agency has in fact gone on to show the inter-linkage between the accused persons charge sheeted where again the appellant finds no mention, the plea said. 

The FIR that was registered owing to the alleged conspiracy and the investigation showing the execution of the conspiracy in the main chargesheet by the accused persons admittedly does not find mention of accused Shabbir Shah or his connivance in such conspiracy or any inter-linkage insofar as the conspiracy or execution of the conspiracy is concerned. 

It is also submitted that the Appellant has only been included in the second supplementary chargesheet and was arrested in pursuance of the same on 04.06.2019. However, the Appellant has been in custody since 26.07.2017 in a PMLA case. The plea has stated that the Appellant has been incarcerated for over four years in the present FIR and intermittently for 35 years in different prisons in Kashmir and India, apart from being under house arrest for a substantial period, without a single conviction or charge against him. 

On May 30, 2017, NIA registered a case against 12 accused persons for alleged conspiracy to raise and collect funds for causing disruption by way of pelting stones, damaging public property, and thereby conspiring to wage war against the government of India.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)