Bombay HC Grants Bail To Man Who Joined ISIS, Praises Him As He Argued Own Case

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday upheld the bail granted by a NIA court to Areeb Majeed, who was arrested in 2014. Majeed has been accused of travelling to Iraq to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

A division bench of Justices SS Shinde and Manish Pitale praised Majeed, who argued his own case before the NIA Court as well as before the high court.

The court granted bail to Majeed on the grounds that the trial would take very long and the petitioner had already undergone imprisonment for more than six years as an undertrial prisoner. 

It added that it was conscious of the fact that even a sentence of life imprisonment could be imposed for the offence with which, Majeed had been charged under the UAPA and the IPC but, it could not ignore the fact that the sentence could range between five years to imprisonment for life.

The court also said Majeed was an educated person, who was completing his graduation in Civil Engineering when he left for Iraq at the age of 21 years.

While ordering Majeed’s release on a personal bond of ₹1 lakh, the court directed him to appear before the local police station twice a day for two months and thereafter once a day and so on. The court also restrained Majeed from speaking to the media about the trial and ordered him to cooperate for the expeditious completion of the trial.

”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 bench said.

A UN report estimated a total of 15,000 fighters from over 80 countries were in ISIS’s ranks in November 2014. In June 2014, the group proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate and began being referred to as the Islamic State. As a caliphate, it claimed religious, political, and military authority over all Muslims worldwide. By December 2015, it held an area extending from western Iraq to eastern Syria, containing an estimated eight to twelve million people.