New Delhi, Sep 10: A Delhi court on Tuesday granted interim bail till October 2 to Lok Sabha MP Engineer Rashid in a terror funding case.

Sheikh Abdul Rashid, popularly known as Engineer Rashid, defeated former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in Baramulla.

Additional Sessions Judge Chander Jit Singh granted the relief to Rashid, who had moved the court seeking interim bail to campaign in the upcoming Jammu & Kashmir assembly elections.

"I am granting interim bail till October 2. He will have to surrender on October 3," the judge said.

The judge granted Rashid the relief on a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh and one surety of the like amount.

The judge also imposed various conditions on him, including that he shall not influence the witnesses or the probe.

On July 5, the court had granted Rashid custody parole to take the oath as a member of the Lok Sabha.

Rashid has been in jail since 2019 after he was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in the 2017 terror funding case.

He is lodged in Tihar jail.

The court has reserved for tomorrow its order on his regular bail application.

Rashid's name cropped up in the case during the investigation of Kashmiri businessman Zahoor Watali, who was arrested by the NIA for allegedly funding terrorist groups and separatists in the Kashmir valley.

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Bengaluru: Leader of Opposition in the Assembly R. Ashoka has accused the Congress government of using the hijab issue to placate what he described as discontent among minority voters after the Davanagere by-election.

In a post on X on Wednesday, Ashoka alleged that the state government, instead of addressing issues such as price rise, corruption, farmers’ distress and law and order, was attempting to retain its minority vote base by reviving the hijab issue.

Referring to the 2022 dress code introduced by the BJP government, which prohibited hijab in schools and colleges, Ashoka said the Karnataka High Court had upheld the policy and emphasised the importance of discipline in educational institutions.

He questioned the Congress government’s move to revisit the issue and asked whether setting aside the court-backed policy to benefit one community could be described as secularism.

Ashoka further alleged that while the government was willing to permit hijab, it continued to prohibit saffron shawls.

He accused the government of dividing students on religious lines rather than treating schools and colleges as spaces of equality.

Drawing a comparison with Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal, Ashoka claimed that excessive appeasement politics had harmed the state and warned that the Congress in Karnataka could face a similar political response.

He said voters in Karnataka would teach the Congress a lesson for what he termed “vote-bank politics” and for compromising constitutional and judicial principles.