A Delhi court on Tuesday granted custody parole to jailed Lok Sabha MP Engineer Rashid from July 24 to August 4 to attend the Monsoon Session of Parliament. On the other hand, his interim bail plea was rejected.
Rashid had argued in court that he should either be granted interim bail or permission to attend Parliament in custody, without payment of travel costs, as he was seeking to attend Parliament as his public duty and not for personal work.
Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh, however, imposed travel costs on him. Rashid’s lawyers are likely to challenge the order in Delhi High Court.
Rashid had defeated National Conference leader Omar Abdullah in Baramulla by 2 lakh plus votes in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. He has been lodged in Tihar jail since 2019 in an eight-year-old terror funding case.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Rashid on August 9, 2019, four days after the abrogation of Article 370 and the removal of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status.
The NIA’s case is that Rashid used various public platforms to “propagate the ideology of separatism and secessionism”, and was closely associated with various terrorist organisations. The agency had also alleged that he wanted to “legitimise” the United Jihad Council (UJC), a platform of anti-India militant groups in J-K.
Charges were framed against Rashid in March 2022 under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging war against the government), and 124A (sedition) of the Indian Penal Code and for offences relating to terrorist acts and terror funding under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
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However, Rashid has maintained that the NIA has only produced an old Facebook post and statements of two protected witnesses to implicate him. He has also argued that he has already been discharged under sections 20, 38, and 39 of the UAPA, which pertain to being part of a terrorist organisation and lending support to it.
