J&K High Court quashed detention of a man from south Kashmir’s Pulwama district who was booked under the Public Safety Act in 2018.
While setting aside a single bench order which had upheld detention of Nisar Ahmad Qazi of Ticken Pulwama, division bench of Justices Sanjeev Kumar and Rajnesh Oswal quashed the detention order.
The court directed the authorities to release the detenue forthwith from the preventive custody, if not required in any other case.
Qazi through advocate G N Shaheen had challenged the single bench order in an appeal on the ground that the detaining authority was well aware that the detenue at the time of detention was already in “custody of the state” in connection with commission of “substantive offences” and had not approached any court for bail.
“Subjective satisfaction without taking relevant material in consideration and the non-application of mind by the detaining authority are the grounds that go to the root of the detention and vitiate it completely,” the DB order said.
The court said the detention order of the detenue cannot be justified in view of the law laid down by the Supreme Court in Surya Prakash Sharma v State of U. P. and others. “If the idea of issuing the detention order was to prevent the detenue from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of the state, that objective stood already achieved with the arrest of detenue in connection with commission of substantive offences for which four different FIRs were registered in the year 2018,” the court said
In his plea the detenue had challenged the detention order issued by District Magistrate, Pulwama against him on 27 November, 2018.