Youth with IS link gets relief

After spending more than six years in jail, Areeb Majeed, the only alleged member of the Islamic State who was arrested on returning to India in 2014 after having travelled to Iraq and Syria and having allegedly joined the terror outfit there, will now finally walk out of prison. This comes after the Bombay high court on Tuesday granted him bail with stringent conditions.

A bench of Justices Sambhaji Shinde and Manish Pitale said that Majeed, could not be allowed to languish in jail when the trial in the case was proceeding at a snail's pace.

"We have observed that he is an educated person, who was completing his graduation in civil engineering when he left for Iraq at the age of 21 years. He categorically stated before us that as a 21-year-old, he was carried away and that he had committed a serious mistake, for which he had already spent more than six years behind bars," the judges noted.

"His father is a doctor of Unani medicine and his sisters are also doctors. His brother is an engineer. This shows that he comes from an educated family and if stringent conditions are imposed upon him, with an undertaking to cooperate with the trial, his release may not be harmful to the society at large and it would not adversely affect the trial," the judges added.

Majeed, 27, a resident of Kalyan, was arrested in November 2014 by the NIA on the grounds that he, as an active member of the IS, had executed several terrorist activities in Iraq and Syria and had returned to India only to wreak terror. He had been accused of plotting to blow up the police headquarters in the city.

As per the NIA case, Majeed travelled to Iraq, along with some other Kalyan youths, on a pilgrimage. However, instead of visiting pilgrimage spots, they had indulged in terrorist activities with the ISIL, the NIA claimed.

Justice Shinde's bench was seized with the NIA's plea challenging the special court's March 2020 order, by which Majeed's third bail application was allowed on merits. The special court, after rejecting Majeed's bail plea twice on merits, had allowed it in March on the grounds that of the 49 witnesses examined so far by the prosecution, 12 had turned hostile and the others' depositions hadn't been sufficient enough to prove a prima facie case against him. However, for this part of the reasoning, Justice Shinde's bench said the special court had erred in making a finding contradictory to its own findings twice earlier, when it had rejected Majeed's bail plea. "We are of the opinion that these fresh grounds on which the NIA court proceeded in the present case in Majeed's favour, cannot be said to be fresh grounds at all and merely because some of the prosecution witnesses stood already examined, it cannot be a ground for re-visiting the findings already rendered against him" the judges said.

However, the bench, led by Justice Shinde, in its 38-page judgment noted that the trial in the case is not expected to be completed in the next few years.

"There is no dispute about the fact that the right to fair and speedy trial is a right recognised under Article 21 of the Constitution of India. The courts have consistently held that undertrials cannot be allowed to languish for years together in jail, while the trials proceed at snail’s pace," the bench observed, adding that if at the end of the trial the accused wasn't found guilty, the time spent in jail could not be given back and the same would amount to violation of right to dignified life.

The judges also stressed the need to strike a balance between the rights of the accused booked under stringent laws and also the rights of society, at large.

The bench further took into account the fact that even if Majeed was booked under the stringent UAPA law for terrorist activities, he did not cause loss of any life. It further considered the fact that in examining around 51 witnesses in the case, the NIA took more than five years and it is yet to examine 107 more witnesses.

The fact that the offences Majeed has been booked for provide imprisonment ranging from five years to lifetime was also considered by the judges, especially after noting that he had already spent six years in jail.