Srinagar: Senior Hurriyat leader Shabir Shah was granted bail on Tuesday, August 27, by a Delhi court in a money laundering case filed by Enforcement Directorate against him, but he is unlikely to walk out of jail.
Shah, who is the president of the outlawed Democratic Freedom Party (DFP) outfit, was granted bail by the Additional Sessions Judge Dheeraj Mor of the Patiala House courts.
The court observed that Shah had spent more time in prison than the prescribed term of seven years for the offence under section 3 of Prevention of Money Laundering Act under which he has been booked by the ED.
“Accordingly, in view of proviso to Section 436A CrPC, he is entitled to be released in this case. Therefore, he is directed to be released from judicial custody in this case. Release warrants be issued. He be released forthwith, if not required in any other case,” the court said.
NIA case
In June this year, the court had granted him statutory bail in the money laundering case. The separatist leader has also been named by the NIA in a separate case and his release from the jail is unlikely to happen very soon.
Shah, who played a significant role in uniting the two factions of the Hurriyat Conference headed by Syed Ali Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, was arrested in 2017 by J&K Police on the directions of the Enforcement Directorate in connection with a 2005 case of money laundering filed by Delhi Police’s Special Cell.
According to officials, Shah had allegedly accepted terror funds from a Kashmiri suspected hawala dealer, Mohammad Aslam Wani, prompting the Enforcement Directorate to file a case of money laundering under the PML Act.
Both Shah and Wani were arrested with the federal agency naming Lashkar-e-Toiba founder Hafiz Saeed among others as suspects in the case. The National Investigation Agency had also filed a case in the matter.
However, while Wani was cleared of terror funding charges by a Delhi court but he was convicted under the Arms Act for allegedly possessing a “cache of arms” with him at the time of his arrest in 2005.
‘Slow poisoning’
In 2018, Dr Bilquies Shah, his wife and a prominent Srinagar-based gynaecologist, filed a bail application, alleging that her husband was being subjected to “slow poisoning” in New Delhi’s Tihar jail where the separatist leader has been incarcerated since his arrest.
Shah told the court that the agency had already completed its investigation with more than 17 witnesses examined and over 700-paged chargesheet already filed in the case.
“Trial is only going on because I am alive. If there is no Shah, there will be no trial,” the separatist leader then told the court through video conferencing.
‘Fuelling unrest’
In 2022, the ED attached Shah’s residence in Botshah Colony of Srinagar in connection with the money laundering probe. The agency accused the separatist leader of “fuelling unrest in Kashmir valley by way of stone-throwing, processions, protests, bandhs, hartals and other subversive activities.”
“He was involved in receiving funds from terrorist organisation Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM) and other terrorists outfits based in Pakistan as well as from the Pakistani establishment through hawala and various other means and channels and these funds were then being used for fuelling and supporting terrorist activities in the Kashmir valley,” the ED had said in a statement.
The 71-year-old Hurriyat leader, who was described as a ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ by the Amnesty International in 1992, has spent more than 39 years in prison as his politics has brought him at loggerheads both with the government and even other separatist leaders.
Shah was arrested for the first time in 1968 as a 14-year-old student when he was accused of organising and carrying out a demonstration in Kashmir for the “right of self-determination” for the people.
In the thick of the agitation in Kashmir against the transfer of a tract of land to Amarnath shrine board in 2008, Shah led a march to Muzaffarabad during which moderate Hurriyat leader Sheikh Abdul Aziz was killed in alleged police firing.
