The Delhi High Court has directed Tihar jail authorities to ensure that Kashmiri separatist leader Altaf Ahmad Shah, in custody since 2017 in a terror funding case, is shifted to All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) here. The court directive came after it was informed that he was diagnosed with renal cancer.
In the order passed on October 3, Justice Sudhir Kumar Jain said, “After considering the totality of the circumstances and in the interest of justice, it is ordered that the petitioner [Mr. Shah] be shifted to AIIMS, Delhi, for appropriate treatment under the judicial custody and direct supervision of the jail superintendent concerned and after following all necessary security measures”.
The High Court also allowed one of Mr. Shah’s children to meet him once a day for an hour in the hospital, subject to proper verification and strictly as per the rules of the hospital concerned.
Diagnosed with cancer
The court’s direction came after it was informed that Mr. Shah was suffering from various ailments and was receiving treatment at RML Hospital here and was recently diagnosed with renal cancer.
Mr. Shah is the son-in-law of separatist leader late Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who died in 2021. He was arrested by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) in 2017 along with six others in a case of alleged terror funding received from Pakistan. Mr. Shah has been lodged in Tihar jail since then.
Last week, Mr. Shah’s daughter, Ruwa Shah, wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah seeking his intervention to release her father on health grounds. She also took to Twitter stating that her father has been diagnosed with acute renal cancer which has spread to his other body parts, including his bones.
