J&K leader Shah Faesal withdraws petition in HC against his detention
Bureaucrat-turned-politician Shah Faesal on Thursday withdrew the habeas corpus plea from the Delhi high court, challenging his detention. The plea was withdrawn by Shah Faesal’s wife Iram Shah, after she met the former IAS officer in Srinagar’s Sher-i-Kashmir International Convention Centre, which is now a detention center on Tuesday (September 10).
The development has come nearly a month after Faesal was detained at the Delhi airport and sent back to Kashmir where he was detained again. Days after his detention, Faesal had filed a plea, claiming that the detention was illegal.
Faesal’s lawyer has said that while the plea of habeas corpus has been withdrawn, the petition challenging the Look Out Circular (LOC) issued against the former IAS officer is still pending before the high court.
The affidavit filed in the court read, “The petitioner communicated that in consideration of the fact that hundreds of other residents of the state of Jammu and Kashmir have been unlawfully detained in the intervening weeks and have not been released as of yet, being aware of the fact that many or most of these detenues have no access to legal counsel or other remedies, he no longer wishes to pursue the present petition as a legal remedy against his unlawful detention.”
Warisha Farasat, Faesal’s lawyer, said the respondent for the Union of India in the case had raised objections on the jurisdiction and argued that the plea could not have been filed in Delhi. However, the high court said that the issue can also be heard by the bench which is hearing the plea against the look out circular.
Faesal had submitted that on the intervening night of August 14 and 15, he was illegally picked up from New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport while on his way to complete the academic fellowship at Harvard University in the United States.
He had alleged that he was illegally whisked away against his wishes. The petition had further stated that no transit remand was sought in Delhi before sending him to Srinagar and no arrest memo or seizure memo was provided to him.
