Bail plea of Mir, Khanday to be taken up tomorrow

Srinagar, July 6 (UNI) A local court will tomorrow take up the bail applications of former Jammu and Kashmir Minister and sitting legislator Ghulam Ahmed Mir, senior IAS officer Mohammad Iqbal Khanday, BSF DIG K C Padhi and three others arrested by the CBI in connection with the sex racket case.

The bail applications would be taken up before the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Srinagar, Mohammad Yousuf Akhoon.

The court had on July 4 deferred their bail pleas for tomorrow.

That day, the CBI had also filed its report and objections to the bail applications and sought some time to engage a lawyer to plead the case.

While only the former Minister was represented by a lawyer, the other accused were unable to engage any counsel so far to plead their case.

Mir was represented by Rakesh Sehrawat, a Delhi High court advocate and an assistant of senior lawyer H R Khan Suhail.

After hearing the arguments, the Judge told the other petitioners to engage their counsel by the next date of hearing of bail pleas.

The bail applications of three other accused Jammu and Kashmir Police DSP Mohammad Ashraf Mir, Mehrajuddin Malik and Shabir Ahmed Laway (Kalla) had also come up for hearing that day.

The Judge said the Tehsil Legal Services Committee had forwarded the names of 60 lawyers as desired by the court, but none of them expressed willingness to plead the case of the sex racket accused.

The Kashmir Bar Association (KBA) submitted in the court that no lawyer was prevented by it from pleading the case of the accused.

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court had on July three referred back to the CJM, Srinagar, the bail applications of the accused.

The bail applications of the accused had come up before a division bench, comprising Justice Bashir Ahmed Kirmani and Justice Hakim Imtiyaz Hussain.

The bench gave special powers to the CJM, Srinagar, to hear and decide about the bail applications of the sex racket accused.

The bail pleas of the sex racket accused had been referred to the division bench by the CJM, Srinagar on June 23.

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court, which is monitoring the investigations conducted by the CBI into the sex racket case, in its directions on May 15 had ordered that any bail application for release of any seized person or articles should not be disposed of by any court unless brought to the notice of the division bench.

On July three, the CJM had remanded Khanday and Kawa in 14-day judicial custody and sent them to the Central Jail.

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