Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Nov 8: High Court has quashed three detention orders passed under Public Safety Act and directed the authorities to release all the three detenues from the preventive custody.
Justice Vinod Chatterji Koul has quashed PSAs of Mohammad Ilyas Dar of Khudwani Kulgam, Mukhtar Ahmad Dar of Dangerpora Anantnag and Mohammad Saleem Dar of Aripanthan Budgam. The detenues were detained on 07.05.2022, 25.06.2022 and 15.04.2022 by the District Magistrates of Kulgam, Anantnag and Kulgam respectively.
The detenues challenged their PSAs on various grounds and the court after hearing the parties on length quashed these PSAs with the direction to the authorities to release them from the preventive custody forthwith.
Court said the detenue cannot be expected to make a meaningful exercise of his Constitutional and Statutory rights guaranteed under Article 22(5) of the Constitution of India and Section 13 of the J&K Public Safety Act, 1978, unless and until the material on which detention order is based, is supplied to him.
Court added that if the detenu is not supplied the material, on which the detention order is based, he will not be in a position to make an effective representation against his detention order. “The failure on the part of the detaining authority to supply the material, relied at the time of making the detention order to the detenu, renders the detention order illegal and unsustainable”, read the judgment.
Court said the detaining authority before passing an order of detention has to get inputs from different agencies, including Superintendent of Police concerned, but responsibility to formulate grounds of detention exclusively rests with detaining authority.
“It is the detaining authority, who has to go through reports and other inputs received by him from concerned police and other agencies and on such perusal arrive at a subjective satisfaction that a person is to be placed under preventive detention. It is, therefore, for detaining authority to formulate grounds of detention and satisfy itself that grounds of detention so formulated warrant passing of order of preventive detention”, court said
However, in the instant cases, it is evident from impugned orders of detention that grounds of detention have not been prepared by detaining authority and resultantly impugned detention orders are vitiated.
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