Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Mar 8: The High Court has quashed two detention orders passed under Public Safety Act (PSA) and directed the release of detenues.
Justice Rahul Bharti has quashed the PSA of Inayat Javeed Ganaie and Musaib Ahmad Khan residents of Pulwama and Srinagar. Both were detained by the concerned District Magistrates on 10.09.2024 and 29.04.2025 in order to prevent them from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of the security of the State.
Both the detenues challenged their PSAs in separate petitions before the court. The petitioner-Ganaie assails act of putting up of case for his preventive detention from the end of the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Pulwama and acted upon by the District Magistrate Pulwama by stating that very fact that he was admitted to bail by the criminal courts of law by reference to criminal cases undergoing trial was kept withheld from being in the notice of the District Magistrate, Pulwama. Otherwise the District Magistrate, Pulwama would not have ventured to subject the petitioner to suffer the preventive detention custody by co-relating the petitioner’s antecedents in the context of FIRs against him which have been booked under ordinary criminal/penal law of the Country.
The PSA passed against the detenue-Khan was on the dossier of SSP Srinagar on which the District Magistrate, Srinagar formulated the grounds of detention mentioning therein that as per the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Srinagar’s reports, the petitioner is deeply influenced by radical ideology and being in contact with active terrorists and OGWs of TRF outfit.
“There is a quality difference between the activities of a prospective detenu which are to be counted as prejudicial to the security of the State/UT vis-à-vis the activities which are reckoned to be prejudicial to the maintenance of public order”, Justice Bharti recorded in detenue-Ganaie’s case.
“When this Court peruses the grounds of detention which are providing support to the preventive detention order impugned in the writ petition, this Court comes across with a live evidence of sheer mechanical as well as non-application of mind at the end of the District Magistrate, Srinagar”, Court recorded in the case of detenue-Khan.
The court added that the impugned preventive detention orders are found to be seriously flawed and vitiated with illegality warranting it to be quashed and is accordingly quashed with approval/ confirmation/extension order/s related to the preventive detention custody of the detenues.
The petitioners court directed are, thus, to be released from their preventive detention custody from the concerned Jail for which purpose the Superintendent of concerned Jail to restore their personal liberty if they are not meant to be kept confined by reference to any other criminal cases.
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