The Delhi High Court on Friday announced that it will hold a preliminary hearing on January 14 on the appeal filed by jailed Jammu & Kashmir MP Engineer Rashid, who has challenged the costs imposed by a trial court while granting him custody parole to attend Parliamentary sessions.
The matter came before Justice Ravinder Dudeja after a division bench delivered a split verdict. Justice Dudeja clarified that the January 14 hearing will be confined to determining whether he should decide the appeal himself or whether the case must be placed before a larger bench.
Senior Advocate N. Hariharan represented Rashid, while Senior Advocate Siddharth Luthra appeared for the National Investigation Agency (NIA). Both drew the Court’s attention to Section 433 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), which governs the procedure when judges on a bench are equally divided.
Section 433 provides that when two judges differ on an appeal, the matter must be placed before a third judge. The proviso empowers the original bench or the new judge to direct that the appeal be re-heard by a larger bench if deemed necessary.
In light of these provisions, both sides submitted that Justice Dudeja must conduct a preliminary hearing to decide which course of action should follow. The Court accordingly scheduled the matter for January 14.
The division bench delivered its split ruling on November 7.
• Justice Vivek Chaudhary, heading the bench, dismissed Rashid’s plea, holding that custody parole can be granted only in cases of death, marriage, serious illness, or similar emergencies, and no such emergent circumstance had been shown by Rashid.
• Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, however, allowed the plea in part and modified the trial court’s direction. He held that Rashid would be liable to pay only reasonable transportation costs incurred by the State for escorting him from Tihar Jail to Parliament and back each day he avails custody parole to attend Parliamentary proceedings.
Rashid had approached the Court seeking modification of an earlier March 25 order of a coordinate bench directing him to deposit approximately ₹4 lakh with the jail authorities as a precondition for attending Parliament while in custody.
Rashid, elected from Baramulla in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, has been lodged in Tihar Jail since 2019, after being arrested by the NIA under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in the 2017 alleged terror-funding case.
