The Bombay high court has stayed the trial of an alleged Kashmiri separatist belonging to the Hizbul Mujahideen, as his lawyer pleaded that the police did not seek the sanction of the Maharashtra government.
Urfi Ghulam Mustafa was arrested at Mumbai international airport in 1992 and some cassettes containing seditious material regarding Kashmir were seized from him.
However, the police filed a chargesheet against him only in 1998, pressing charges of sedition and waging war against the government.
The songs in the cassettes were 'prejudicial to the sovereignty of the country' and 'subversive', and appealed for the invasion of Kashmir, the chargesheet said.
But Mustafa moved the sessions court, contending that as per the Code of Criminal Procedure, the state government's sanction is needed for pressing sedition charges.
The government claims to have issued the sanction in 1994, but it was not produced along with the chargesheet.
The sessions court rejected Mustafa's application for discharge, so he approached the high court which earlier this week stayed the trial, and adjourned the hearing on his application to June 5.
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