SRINAGAR, Apr 30: Jailed Lok Sabha member Sheikh Abdul Rashid on Thursday arrived here to meet his ailing father after the Delhi High Court granted him a week’s interim bail, officials said.
Rashid, alias Engineer Rashid, the Lok Sabha MP from Jammu and Kashmir’s Baramulla, arrived at the Srinagar airport here on Thursday afternoon and drove straightaway to the SMHS hospital to visit his ailing father, the officials said.
The Delhi High Court on Tuesday granted one-week interim bail to the jailed Lok Sabha MP to enable him to visit his ailing father.
A bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Madhu Jain, however, clarified that during this period, Rashid, who is undergoing jail term in a terror-funding case, could either visit the hospital where his father is being treated or remain at home.
The bench further ordered that at least two police officials would accompany him in plainclothes at all times and Rashid shall not bear the cost of their travel. During the one-week duration, there shall not be any “undue visitors” when Rashid is with his father except immediate family members, it added.
The court passed the order while dealing with Rashid’s appeal against a trial court’s April 24 decision refusing to grant him interim bail.
The Baramulla MP, who defeated Chief Minister Omar Abdullah and Sajad Lone in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, is facing trial in the terror-funding case with allegations that he funded separatists and terror groups in Jammu and Kashmir.
He has been lodged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail since 2019 after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested him in the 2017 terror-funding case. After being listed in a charge sheet in October 2019, a special NIA court framed charges against Rashid and others in March 2022 under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging war against the government) and 124A (sedition) of the IPC and for offences relating to terrorist acts and terror-funding under UAPA.
