New Delhi: The Delhi High Court said Friday it will hear September 3 former IAS officer Shah Faesal’s plea alleging he was illegally detained at Delhi airport August 14 and taken back to Srinagar where he has been kept under house arrest.
A bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dhingra Sehgal asked both sides to file their submissions before the next date and listed it for hearing September 3.
The court declined to give an earlier date, saying the matter will take time and ‘it is not going to happen overnight’.
“A week or 10 days will not matter,” the bench said and also made it clear that it was not going to examine the issue of Faesal’s travel to the US for his studies as it was not a prayer sought in the habeas corpus plea moved on his behalf.
The bench listed the matter September 3 as Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta was not available during the first half of the day as he was arguing in the Supreme Court.
Faesal’s lawyers, during the brief hearing, sought that his son and parents be allowed to meet him.
The bench said that Faesal’s wife, son and parents can meet him, but not all of them together.
The central government said it will ensure that the family can meet Faesal.
The habeas corpus plea, moved on behalf of Faesal through a ‘pariorkar’ or next of friend — Mohd Hussain Cader, said that he was on his way to Harvard University in the US for higher studies when he was illegally detained at the Delhi airport under the Public Safety Act (PSA).
A habeas corpus plea requires a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or a court.
The plea alleges that the manner in which he was ‘whisked away’ to Kashmir without even a transit remand amounts to ‘abduction’.
The petition has contended that he was scheduled to travel to Boston, US, via Istanbul and Frankfurt when he was detained at Delhi airport.
It said he was travelling to the US to complete his course in Masters in Public Administration when he was ‘illegally picked up’ from the Indira Gandhi International Airport.
The former bureaucrat from Jammu and Kashmir had floated a political outfit — J&K Peoples Movement party — after resigning from the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
Post the removal of special status to Jammu and Kashmir, provided under Article 370, Faesal had said Kashmir is experiencing an ‘unprecedented’ lockdown and its eight million population ‘incarcerated’ like never before.
PTI