The Delhi High Court on Monday issued a notice to the Enforcement Directorate (ED), seeking its response on a petition filed by Dr. Bilquies Shah, wife of Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah, seeking quashing of a 2007 money laundering case linked to alleged terror financing.
Justice Sanjeev Narula sought the ED’s reply and listed the matter for further hearing on September 26. The court also passed a similar order on July 23 in a related plea by co-accused Mohd Aslam Wani, and directed the same to be applied in Dr. Shah’s case.
Bilquies Shah has been accused of receiving ₹2.08 crore from Wani, who was arrested in 2005 by the Delhi Police’s Special Cell for allegedly acting as a conduit for hawala funds meant for Shabir Shah and terror outfits.
Appearing for Dr. Shah, Advocate M.S. Khan argued that the predicate offence—on the basis of which the ED filed the present case—was no longer valid. He pointed out that Wani was acquitted of all charges related to terror funding by a trial court in 2010, a decision that was upheld by the High Court in 2017. “If the underlying scheduled offence does not stand, the related proceedings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) also fall flat,” Khan submitted.
The ED had earlier alleged that Wani, a Srinagar-based businessman, delivered over ₹2.25 crore to Shabir Shah in multiple instalments and that ₹63 lakh was recovered from him during his arrest on August 26, 2005. The agency claimed that the money was routed through hawala channels from the Middle East and was meant for Shah and a Jaish-e-Mohammad commander in Srinagar.
Charges against Wani and Shah were framed in 2017. In 2021, Bilquies Shah was added as an accused via a supplementary chargesheet. Khan also pointed out the slow pace of the trial, highlighting that only 4 out of 33 listed witnesses have been examined in nearly seven years.
