Excelsior Correspondent
Srinagar, Jan 7: High Court has quashed the detention order under Public Safety Act (PSA) of a boy saying that the order issued by the Magistrate is illegal and directed the authorities to release him.
Justice Rahul Bharti said the detenue-Sahil Shakeel was hardly out of his age of majority of 18 years and was yet to attain age of 19 years when he came to be visited upon not by the challenge of life but by the challenge of law in the conferment of preventive detention passed by the District Magistrate, Shopian.
Court said that from the age of minority the petitioner found himself landed in the aging of preventive custody by virtue of detention order No. 129/DMS/PSA/2022 dated 20.6.2022 of the District Magistrate, Shopian.
From the grounds of challenge court added, it is not forthcoming as to which alleged antecedent acts of the petitioner came to be reported to the District Magistrate, Shopian by the Senior Superintendent of Police, Shopian because there are no factual references found in the Grounds of Detention supporting the impugned Order of Detention.
“A bare reading of the Grounds of Detention in support of the Order of Detention reflects as if the District Magistrate, Shopian was penning down a fictionalised character conceived in the petitioner. It is repulsive to the probability that an 18- year-old boy can be attributed such generalised allegations which even in the case of hardcore offender of law may fall short on some counts”, Justice Bharti said.
Justice Bharti recorded that the District Magistrate, Shopian in his grounds of detention has done nothing but borrowed word-wise-word transcripts of the Dossier of the Senior Superintendent of Police, Shopian. “This Court feels disturbed that how and to what extent the detention to which the petitioner has come to be subjected on the basis of the impugned order of detention in terms whereof the petitioner at such an impressionable age has come to be exposed to be in the company of the hardcore jail inmates/detenues and the time spent by him during the course of his detention, must have caused psychological damage to him”, reads the judgment.
The detaining authority court said, seems to have lost the idea of age of the petitioner to whom the preventive detention was being served and that fact itself is reflective of the non-application of mind on the part of the District Magistrate, Shopian. “The impugned order of detention is nothing but a mere postal delivery of the Dossier of Senior Superintendent of Police, Shopian”, reads the judgment.
Court directed to the release of the petitioner-detenue forthwith from the preventive detention with the direction to the Superintendent of the concerned jail shall ensure to release the petitioner-detenue forthwith without any loss of time in compliance to the directions of this court.
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