Separatist leader Shabir Shah gets bail in money laundering case, to stay in jail for other offences

A Delhi court held that though the other cases in which Jammu and Kashmir separatist leader Shabir Shah was in custody were serious, that cannot be sufficient grounds to deny statutory bail as he had not been convicted of the offences.

In 2017, the NIA had arrested Shah from his Srinagar residence in an alleged terror funding case and later handed him over to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in an alleged money laundering case. (ANI Photo)

A Delhi court recently granted statutory bail to Jammu and Kashmir separatist leader Shabir Ahmad Shah in a money laundering case connected to a terror funding case. However, he is likely to remain in jail in two other cases registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

Shah had moved a statutory bail plea under Section 436 of the Criminal Procedure Code stating that he had already suffered more than half of the period of the maximum punishment (seven years) prescribed in the offence of money laundering. He was just 45 days away from completing seven years in custody for the offence.

Additional Sessions Judge Dheeraj Mor of Patiala House Courts held on June 7 that the other cases in which Shah was in custody were very serious in nature but that cannot be sufficient grounds for declining his statutory bail as he had not been convicted of the offences.

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Shah led the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (JKDFP), a banned separatist political outfit in the Valley.

A resident of south Kashmir’s Anantnag, Shah’s first arrest was at the age of 14 for participating in a pro-separatist protest. In 1974, when he was 21, Shah joined the Jammu and Kashmir People’s League — an organisation that was the first to talk of separatism in Jammu and Kashmir. Shah went on to form the JKDFP in 1998 after parting ways with the Jammu and Kashmir People’s League.

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