The Supreme Court on Thursday granted bail to Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Ahmed Shah in a terror-funding case in which he was arrested by the National Investigation Agency in 2019, court officials said.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta allowed Shah’s bail plea after hearing final arguments, saying a detailed order with stringent conditions would follow.
Shah, represented by senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, had challenged a June 12, 2025 order of the Delhi High Court denying him bail. Senior advocate Siddharth Luthra appeared for the investigating agency.
During the hearing, the bench pointed to what it described as anomalies in the conduct of the trial and also noted Shah’s prolonged incarceration since his arrest on June 4, 2019.
In September last year, the Supreme Court had declined to grant interim bail to Shah and sought a response from the NIA on his appeal against the high court’s order.
The Delhi High Court had earlier refused him bail, saying the possibility of Shah engaging in similar unlawful activities or influencing witnesses could not be ruled out.
The case stems from a 2017 investigation in which the NIA booked 12 people for allegedly conspiring to raise funds to disrupt peace in Jammu and Kashmir through activities such as stone-pelting, damaging public property and waging war against the central government.
Investigators alleged that Shah played a significant role in promoting the separatist movement in the region by inciting public support for secession, praising slain militants as “martyrs”, and raising funds through hawala transactions and cross-Line of Control trade to support subversive and militant activities.
Reacting to the development, Shah’s daughter Sehar Shabir Shah wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that it marked “the first step of justice” after what she described as decades of imprisonment without conviction, adding that the family had always maintained faith in the judiciary.
Separately, Kashmiri cleric and Hurriyat chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq welcomed the court’s decision in a post on X, expressing hope that courts would grant relief to other “political prisoners and youth” jailed inside and outside Jammu and Kashmir, bringing relief to their families and the people of the region.