The Bombay High Court on Friday agreed that medical condition of undertrial Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is serious and, therefore, agreed to hear his plea for bail next week. Nawab Malik's lawyer, Amit Desai, with advocate Kushal Mor argued that he had been in custody for over a year with severe kidney problems. As per his lawyers, Nawab Malik had lost a kidney due to his health and that his other kidney was weak.
During the previous hearing, Justice Karnik had asked Nawab Malik and the ED to explain if Malik could be considered a “sick person” under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), for the purpose of deciding Malik's bail plea in a money laundering case. To this, his lawyer said that the court should first be satisfied with Nawab Malik's medical condition and decide accordingly whether his bail plea should be urgently listed for a hearing. The jailed NCP leader was arrested by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) in March 2022 in a money laundering case allegedly linked to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.