Explain Rs 4-lakh rider on MP Rashid for attending Parliament: HC

The Delhi High Court on Tuesday directed the city police to explain how it calculated the nearly Rs 4 lakh amount that MP Sheikh Abdul Rashid, alias Engineer Rashid, has been asked to deposit in order to attend Parliament while in custody.

A Bench of Justice Vivek Chaudhary and Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani was hearing Rashid’s plea to modify a March 25 order of a coordinate Bench, which had imposed the payment condition. The amount was mentioned in a communication from the office of the Public Prosecutor (Delhi Armed Police) to the Superintendent of Tihar jail.

Since the Additional Public Prosecutor concerned was unavailable, the court deferred the query to the next hearing, asking the state to give a detailed explanation. NIA’s counsel Akshai Malik told the court that the Delhi Police would be the proper authority to address the issue.

Senior advocate N Hariharan, representing Rashid, argued that while the court was not being asked for interim bail, the current condition was preventing the MP from fulfilling his parliamentary duties. “Allow him to attend in custody as before, but don’t impose a financial barrier that makes it impossible for him to do his job,” he submitted.

Hariharan stressed that a legislator’s absence meant constituents were left unheard in Parliament. He referred to past rulings, including Rajesh Ranjan vs State of Bihar, where a detained MP was permitted to attend sessions, and Suresh Kalmadi vs CBI. The Bench asked whether the Kalmadi judgment had ever been tested before the Supreme Court, to which Hariharan said it had not.

He maintained that once permission to attend was granted, it should not be tied to “an unreasonable cost” that ndermines the very purpose of the permission. The matter is now listed for August 18. Rashid has been in Tihar Jail since 2019 after his arrest by the NIA in a 2017 alleged terror-funding case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.