Son of Hizb chief freed on bail, sibling’s plea rejected

The Delhi High Court on Friday granted bail to one son of Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, while rejecting the plea of another in a terror funding case.

A bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur granted relief to Syed Ahmad Shakeel but dismissed the bail plea of Shahid Yusuf, observing that it could not ignore the larger conspiracy outlined by the prosecution.

Citing allegations that hawala channels were used to route terror funds into Jammu and Kashmir, the court said Yusuf was allegedly part of this network. “The nature of the allegations and the material placed on record prima facie establish the appellant’s involvement in this conspiracy and his direct contact with known members of the proscribed terrorist outfit,” the bench said.

The order stated that Yusuf allegedly received money from co-accused Aijaz Ahmad Bhat alias Aijaz Maqbool Bhat, knowing the funds would be used to further terrorist activities. The court also noted the possibility of him being a flight risk, particularly as he had earlier travelled on a passport with a falsified parental identity and later destroyed the document. It further observed there was “a real likelihood” of his tampering with evidence and influencing witnesses.

In granting bail to Shakeel, the court pointed to his prolonged incarceration of more than six years without certainty of the trial concluding soon. It noted that the main allegation against him concerned the receipt of funds, not their use for terrorist activity. Shakeel, a senior lab technician in the Department of Microbiology at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura, was described as a government servant.

“Keeping in view the role assigned to the appellant (Shakeel), continued detention of the appellant at this stage would not serve the ends of justice,” the bench said. He was granted bail on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh with two sureties of the same amount.

Shakeel was arrested by the NIA in August 2018 in connection with a 2011 case involving the alleged transfer of funds from Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir through hawala channels to finance secessionist and terrorist activities. Yusuf was arrested in October 2017 over allegations of receiving funds from Hizb-ul-Mujahideen from abroad and was chargesheeted in 2018.

According to the NIA, Shakeel allegedly received money through Western Union from absconding accused Aijaz Ahmad Bhat, and his name had surfaced in raising, receiving and collecting funds from the outfit’s cadres in Saudi Arabia. Salahuddin, designated a “global terrorist” by the United States, is the self-styled commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.