Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Jan 31: High Court today quashed detention passed under Public Safety Act and directed the authorities to release the detenue by observing that the detention order passed by the detaining authority is an example of sheer non-seriousness.
Justice Rahul Bharti quashed the detention order of one Javaid Ahmad Bhat with the direction to the jail authorities to restore his personal liberty with immediate effect. The detention order was passed by District Magistrate (DM) Kupwara in June last year against the detenue in order to prevent him from any activity prejudicial to the security of the state.
Court reprimanded the District Magistrate Kupwara for relieving himself from labour and effort of independent application of mind to the dossier served by the Superintendent of Police Kupwara against Bhat and copy-pasting it with even the typographical errors.
Justice Bharti after having heard the counsel for the both sides said the detention order of the petitioner-Bhat ex-facie is bad in the eyes of law and as such is held illegal deserving to be quashed.
The court while quashing the order of detention recorded that the same is an example of sheer non-seriousness on the part of the District Magistrate (DM) in dishing out a preventive detention order against the petitioner by literally acting as a post-office as if delivering a dossier of the Superintendent of Police, Handwara asking for the preventive detention of the petitioner under the provisions of the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act.
Court said that for the period intervening the date of quashment of first detention order by virtue of judgment dated 28.06.2021 and the issuance of second preventive detention order on 24.06.2022, there is no factual content stated in the dossier by the Superintendent of Police Handwara on the basis of which the petitioner could be said to have indulged in acts of omission or commission whereby his personal liberty was reckoned as a circumstance posing live threat to the so called security of the State.
Court added that the District Magistrate Kupwara simply carried out re-typing of the dossier in the name of showing so called application of mind and even the typographical errors and omission of the dossier were imported and repeated as it is by the District Magistrate Kupwara.
Court recorded that this is the best exhibit of the mechanical application of mind on the part of the District Magistrate Kupwara in issuing the preventive detention order against the petitioner as if the matter of depriving a person of his personal liberty.
“Discretion to issue non bailable warrant instead of bailable warrant against an accused in a criminal case would have much better quality of application of mind on the part of a magistrate issuing the process than the District Magistrate Kupwara in issuing the preventive detention order in reference against the petitioner”, reads the judgment.
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