NEW DELHI: A division bench of the Delhi High Court, comprising Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur, dismissed Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Ahmad Shah’s application for bail in a terror funding case.
The appeal challenged a trial court’s July 7, 2023, order that had refused to grant him interim release. “The present appeal is dismissed,” the bench pronounced. A detailed order explaining the court’s reasoning is yet to be released.
In August 2023, the High Court had issued notices to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), seeking its response to Shah’s bail petition. The agency, which originally brought the charges, registered the case in 2017 against Shah and eleven others, alleging they conspired to raise and collect funds to orchestrate public disruptions, such as stone-pelting and property damage—and “to wage war against the government of India.”
Shah’s legal team argued that there was “no material case” against him warranting continued detention. In its 2023 appeal against the additional sessions judge’s decision, the defense highlighted the protracted nature of the trial: “The impugned order of the additional sessions judge is contrary to law, weight of evidence and probabilities of the case.
The appellant has been languishing in jail in the present case for four years, with over 400 witnesses to be examined and only 15 witnesses having been examined till date in over 4 years.” They asserted that Shah, detained since June 4, 2019, faced an unreasonably long wait for the conclusion of his trial, making bail a necessary relief.
The trial court had, in March 2022, framed charges under sections relating to conspiracy for raising funds to cause public disorder and conspiring to wage war against the government of India.
