Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief's one son granted bail, other's plea rejected

The Delhi High Court on Friday granted bail to one of the sons of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin while denying the relief to another in a terror funding case.

A bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur dismissed the bail plea of Salahuddin's son Shahid Yusuf saying the court cannot ignore the larger conspiracy brought forth by the prosecution.

Considering prosecution's allegation of the use of hawala channels 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 order said he was allegedly received money from co-accused Aijaz Ahmad Bhat alias Aijaz Maqbool Bhat, knowing the funds would be used to further terrorist activities.

The possibility of Yusuf being a flight risk, the high court said, couldn't be ruled out, particularly given that he reportedly travelled on a passport with a falsified parental identity previously and destroyed the document later.

There exists a real likelihood of his tampering with evidence and influencing witnesses, the bench said.

While granting bail to Syed Ahmad Shakeel, the court said he has already suffered prolonged incarceration of 6.11 years without any certainty of the trial concluding within a reasonable time.

The court said the mainstay of the prosecution against Shakeel was the receipt of money and not its use for any terrorist activity.

He was observed to be a government servant, working as a senior lab technician in the Department of Microbiology at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Soura.

"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 him bail on a personal bond of Rs 1 lakh with two sureties of the like amount.

Shakeel was arrested by the NIA on August 30, 2018 from his residence in Srinagar in relation to a terror funding case lodged in 2011.

According to the NIA, the case relates to the transfer of funds through hawala channels by the terrorists based in Pakistan to Jammu and Kashmir, in a criminal conspiracy hatched with some operatives in India, to fuel and fund the secessionist and terrorist activities in J&K.

Yusuf was arrested in October, 2017 on the allegations of receiving funds from Hizb-ul-Mujahideen from abroad and was chargesheeted in 2018.

Shakeel was alleged to have received money through Western Union from absconding accused Aijaz Ahmad Bhat and his name had also surfaced in raising, receiving and collecting funds from the terrorist organisation through cadres from Saudi Arabia.

Syed Salahuddin, designated as a "global terrorist" by the United States, is the self-styled commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.