The Delhi High Court has asked India’s federal counter-terrorism agency whether jailed lawmaker Abdul Rashid Sheikh, widely known as Engineer Rashid, could be released on bail subject to strict conditions, including a restriction on leaving the national capital.
A division bench led by Justice Prathiba M Singh on Wednesday directed senior lawyer Siddharth Luthra, representing the National Investigation Agency (NIA), to seek instructions on whether such conditional bail could be considered. The court scheduled the matter for further hearing on Nov. 3, Live Law reported.
The court was hearing Rashid’s appeal against a lower court’s decision to deny him bail in a case registered under India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
The NIA opposed the bail plea, saying there was sufficient evidence against Rashid to justify his continued detention. Luthra also alleged that Rashid had previously tried to influence a witness during an earlier period when he was released on bail, citing call data records in support of the claim.
The agency said the allegations against Rashid were serious and accused him of involvement in activities it described as anti-national and of having links to a terrorist. It said the evidence of two witnesses was particularly important to the case, including a protected witness.
The court directed that statements from the two witnesses be recorded before the trial court ahead of the next hearing.
Rashid, who was elected to India’s lower house of parliament from the Baramulla constituency in the 2024 general election, has been held in Delhi’s Tihar prison since his arrest by the NIA in 2019 in an alleged terror-funding case.
He was earlier granted temporary bail to attend his father’s funeral and later a 40th-day religious ceremony in Kashmir.
In January, the Delhi High Court rejected Rashid’s challenge to a trial court order framing charges against him in the UAPA case. It held that an order framing charges was interlocutory and could not be challenged through an appeal under the NIA Act, relying on a December 2025 ruling by another bench of the same court.
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