Srinagar: Abdul Rashid Sheikh, popularly known as Engineer Rashid, who is in jail in a terror-funding case, will contest the upcoming Lok Sabha polls from Baramulla, his Awami Ittehad Party (AIP) said on Wednesday.
“The political affairs committee of the AIP decided that we will field Engineer Rashid from the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency,” party spokesperson Firdous Baba said.
He said the AIP is hopeful that Rashid will be released from prison before the election. Rashid had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Baramulla and finished the poll race in the third position.
In case he is not released, it has been decided that Rashid will still contest the polls from the jail, the spokesperson said. “Our Constitution allows an accused person who is not convicted to contest elections from jail as well,” he added.
The 56-year-old former MLA from Handwara was arrested in August 2019 and later chargesheeted by the NIA under various sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in October 2019.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), in its chargesheet, had said “the role of Engineer Rashid in the conspiracy” was to “destabilise Kashmir and cause unrest”.
Rashid, who was a legislator from the Langate Assembly seat in north Kashmir, is the first mainstream politician to have been arrested by the NIA in the case.
His name cropped up during the interrogation of businessman Zahoor Watali, who was arrested by the agency for allegedly “supplying money to terror groups and separatists” in the Valley.
The NIA had registered the case against separatist and secessionist leaders, including unknown members of the Hurriyat Conference, “who were acting in connivance with active terrorists of proscribed outfits Hizbul Mujahideen, Dukhtaran-e-Millat, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and other groups and gangs,” officials said.
The case was registered for “raising, receiving and collecting funds through various illegal means, including hawala, to finance separatist and terrorist activities in Jammu and Kashmir and for causing disruption in the Valley by way of pelting stones at security forces, burning down schools, damaging public property and waging war against India,” the probe agency had said in the FIR.
Hafiz Saeed, the Pakistan-based chief of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, “a front of the Lashker-e-Taiba”, has been named in the FIR as an accused. The FIR also names organisations such as the two factions of the Hurriyat, one led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani and the other by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Dukhtaran-e-Millat, an all-women outfit of separatists.
