Today the Habeas corpus petition of MLA Mehraj Malik was listed before Justice Rajneesh Oswal of the High Court of J&K and Ladakh at Jammu.
When the matter was taken up for hearing, Senior Advocate Rahul Pant, Advocate S.S. Ahmed, Advocate Appu Singh Slathia, Advocate M. Tariq Mughal and Advocate M Zulkarnain Chowdhary vociferously submitted that the reply has not been filed by the government till date and due to the alleged lackadaisical approach of the government, a sitting MLA is still behind bars, due to which the people of his constituency are suffering.
Furthermore, Senior Counsel Advocate Sunil Sethi with senior AAG Monika Kohli appearing for the government submitted that they filed their replies yesterday but due to the defect in the affidavit, the same is not on record. In the open court, the counsels for the respondent served the copies of the reply to the counsels of the petitioner.
The court directed the registry to place on record the replies filed by the government and directed the counsels for the government to make available the record on the next date of hearing. The matter is kept for final consideration on the 20th of November 2025.