Bombay HC reserves order on Kalyan youth Areeb Majeed's bail

Areeb Majeed was arrested on charge of waging war against country

The Bombay High Court has reserved order on the bail plea of alleged ISIS recruit Areeb Majeed who was arrested on the charge of waging war against the country.

The order was reserved yesterday by a bench headed by Justice Ranjit More who heard arguments of the accused and the prosecution.

Areeb, along with three other youths from Kalyan --- Shaheen Tanki, Fahad Shaikh and Aman Tandel--were part of a pilgrims group from India to Iraq in May, 2014 when they went missing.

According to the prosecution, Areeb and his accomplices were suspected to have joined the Syria-based international terror group ISIS.

Areeb was deported to India and arrested by National Investigation Agency (NIA) on November 28, 2014.

In May, 2015, NIA filed an 8,000-page charge-sheet against Areeb under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and Indian Penal Code for waging a war against the country.

Seeking bail, Areeb's lawyer Mobin Solkar argued that the sessions court had extended the time of filing the charge-sheet in this case.

This was in violation of rules as it should have been done by a special NIA court and the sessions court had exceeded its jurisdiction and hence its order was per se was illegal, he added.

In May, 2015, a special court had rejected the bail plea of Areeb on similar grounds.

In the High Court, NIA defended its decision to get Majeed's custody extended by a sessions court saying the NIA court was unavailable on February 25, 2015 and thus, it had approached the special MCOCA sessions court.

Areeb has sought bail saying it was his "right under the criminal procedure code", considering that he had been in custody since November 2014 and the investigating authorities have already filed a charge-sheet in the case.

Areeb was a student in a college at Panvel in Navi Mumbai before he allegedly decided to join ISIS along with three of his friends.