The High Court quashed the Public Safety Act (PSA) slapped on Jamaat-e-Islami chief Abdul Hamid Ganai saying the detention order was vitiated by “total non-application of mind” by the detaining authority.
A division bench of justices Sanjeev Kumar and Rajnesh Oswal on Monday set aside the writ court judgment which had upheld the PSA detention of Ganai.
The Jamaat chief was arrested in March 2019 after the socio-religious organisation was banned by the government on the grounds that Ganai’s activities were inimical to the security of the erstwhile state.
He was booked in an FIR under Unlawful Activities Act as the authority felt it was imperative to keep him under preventive detention to prevent him from indulging in “nefarious” and “anti-national” activities.
The court said while the allegations against Ganai may justify his detention, the law of preventive detention was required to be adhered to scrupulously.
It observed that the order of detention was “clearly vitiated by total non-application of mind by the detaining authority and it should have been held so by the writ court”.
The bench also held that the Police dossier or the grounds of detention made no mention whether Ganai was arrested in connection with the FIRs.
“The detaining authority has also not indicated any reason as to why the substantive laws of the state were not sufficient to deter the detainee from pursuing his activities aimed at destabilising the state and thereby threatening its security,” the court said.