The Delhi High Court on Friday agreed to hear Jammu and Kashmir politician and former bureaucrat Shah Faesal’s plea against his detention at the Delhi Airport last week. The court asked both sides to file their submissions and listed the matter for hearing on September 3, PTI reported.

The bench of Justices Manmohan and Sangita Dingra Sehgal refused to give an earlier date for the hearing, saying that it would take time to hear the matter and it would not “happen overnight”. “A week or 10 days will not matter,” the court was quoted as saying.

The matter was posted for hearing on September 3 as Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the central government, was unavailable during the first half of the day.

The High Court also clarified that it would not examine the matter of Faesal’s travel to the United States for academic work as it was not a request in his habeas corpus plea. Faesal lawyers pushed for his son and parents to be allowed to meet him, which the court allowed, provided they did not visit him together.

The Centre said that it would make sure that the bureaucrat-turned-politician’s family was able to meet him.

Faesal had moved the Delhi High Court on Monday and said that he was detained when he was about to board a flight to go to Harvard University in the United States.

Faesal also alleged that officials did not get a transit remand before they had illegally taken him back to Srinagar. On August 14, Faesal was detained at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport and sent back to Kashmir, where he was held again at a makeshift detention centre at a hotel in Srinagar. Faesal was detained under the Public Safety Act, officials had said.

Also read:

Who detained Kashmiri politician Shah Faesal and under what law?

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