Delhi High Court rejects Engineer Rashid's plea against terror funding charges

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea filed by jailed Baramulla MP Abdul Rashid Sheikh alias Engineer Rashid challenging a trial court order framing terror funding charges against him under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

A Division Bench of Justices Prathiba M Singh and Shail Jain said that the plea was not maintainable in view of a ruling by a coordinate bench that the order on charge in NIA cases is an interlocutory order which cannot be challenged.

"In view thereof, the present appeal [by Rashid] will also not be maintainable, and the same is dismissed as not maintainable," the Court said.

Notably, a Bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Manoj Jain in the case of Shahid Yousuf v National Investigating Agency had held that an order of the NIA court framing charges against the accused is an interlocutory order and any challenge against it is hit by the bar of Section 21 of the NIA Act.

The order was passed on December 23, 2025.

Rashid is currently in Tihar Jail as an accused in the terror funding case under the UAPA. He was arrested in 2019.

He won the Baramulla Lok Sabha seat in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls by defeating current Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah by over two lakh votes. 

The NIA had arrested Rashid in connection with a 2017 terror-funding case. After being chargesheeted in October 2019, a special NIA court formally framed charges in March 2022 against him under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the UAPA, including criminal conspiracy, waging war against the state and terror funding.

He challenged the order before the High Court last year.

While the NIA today stated that there was a delay of over 1,100 days in filing the appeal, the Court said that it will not go into that aspect because the plea itself is not maintainable.

Senior Advocate N Hariharan along with advocates Aditya Wadhwa, Vikhyat Oberoi and Nishita Gupta appeared for Engineer Rashid.

NIA was represented by Senior Advocate Sidharth Luthra and Special Public Prosecutor Akshai Malik, Khawar Saleem and Ayush Aggarwal.