Delhi HC refuses bail to UAE bizman accused of terror funding

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court has dismissed the bail plea of a UAE-based businessman booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act for allegedly funding the unrest in the Kashmir valley.

A bench of Justices Navin Chawla and Shalinder Kaur said the prosecution prima facie established that the accused aided and assisted Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali in bringing foreign money into India for furthering secessionist and terrorist activities in the valley.

The bench, therefore, rejected the plea of Naval Kishore Kapoor against a 2019 order of the trial court denying him bail.

"Sufficient material is available to prima facie point towards involvement of the appellant that he along with accused number 10 (Watali) aided and abetted the flow of funds from fake and bogus companies floated in UAE to channelize the same to secessionists and separatists in Kashmir valley," the court said on March 12.

The alleged routing of funds was done to "wreak havoc" through "stone pelting, burning of schools, etc." in the Kashmir valley.

"The above discussion prima facie reveals that (i) money of terror funding was sent from and by Pakistan and its agencies and (ii) that accused number 10 was one of the main conduits for flow of this terror funding, and (iii) the appellant played an active part in facilitating it," the court said.

Acknowledging that an accused had the right to a speedy trial, observing the case's "peculiar" facts a constitutional court could refuse to grant bail.

After framing of charges, the court said, the rigours under UAPA mandating the refusal of bail if allegations against an accused were prima facie true were stricter.

The court refused to accept the appellant's reliance on his right to speedy trial to get bail and said the trial was fast tracked and taken up twice or thrice a week.

The bench said the credibility and admissibility of documents was not to be tested at the present stage and considering Kapoor lived in Dubai, there was a "likelihood of him fleeing from the clutches of law" aside from tampering with the evidence.

Pursuant to a case registered in 2017, the NIA claimed that its probe revealed that secessionists had entered into a criminal conspiracy to instigate the general public to resort to violence and create a surcharged atmosphere for the propagation of their agenda in the valley.

Kapoor was arrested in July 2018.

The accused persons, including Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, allegedly engineered arson and other unlawful activities such as stone pelting through the funding received from various organisations. 

The secessionists, the NIA claimed, were primarily dependent on the hawala networks and conduits for bringing money from the offshore locations to India to fulfil and fuel anti-India activities in the Kashmir valley.

Kapoor was chargesheeted in January 2019 for conspiracy charge under the IPC and terror funding under the UAPA.