Srinagar, Oct 11: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has quashed a preventive detention order issued against Kaiser Hameed Beigh under the Public Safety Act (PSA), holding that the order was based on vague and irrelevant grounds and that an unexplained delay of more than two years in its execution had snapped the required “live and proximate link” between past alleged activities and the need for detention.
Justice Rajesh Sekhri passed the judgment while allowing a petition challenging the detention order dated June 25, 2022, issued by the District Magistrate, Anantnag. The High Court had stayed the order on September 11, 2024, before its execution.
According to the detention dossier, the Senior Superintendent of Police, Anantnag, had alleged that Beigh was an overground worker of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) outfit and had allegedly provided shelter and transportation to active terroristss. The authorities also cited his previous detention under the PSA in 2021 and apprehensions ahead of the Shri Amarnath Yatra as reasons for seeking fresh preventive detention.
However, the petitioner argued that the allegations were vague, no fresh activities had been attributed to him after the earlier incidents, and the detention order was passed despite the absence of any immediate threat justifying his detention. He also challenged the delay in executing the order, pointing out that he had remained available and continued attending court proceedings.
The authorities opposed the petition, maintaining that the detention order had been passed after considering the police dossier and that the petitioner’s alleged activities posed a threat to the security of the State.
After examining the record, Justice Sekhri observed that the detention order appeared to have been passed on the apprehension that the petitioner’s alleged links with the banned outfit made it risky to keep him at liberty during the Amarnath Yatra. The court noted that the petitioner was regularly attending proceedings before the Additional Sessions Judge, Anantnag, in the single FIR of 2019 cited against him.
Relying on the Supreme Court’s judgment in Additional Secretary to Government of India v. Alka Subash Gadia, the High Court held that pre-execution challenges to detention orders can be entertained in limited circumstances, including where orders are based on vague or irrelevant grounds or are issued for an improper purpose.
The court further observed that preventive detention must be supported by a strong and immediate connection between past conduct and the present necessity for detention. The unexplained delay of over two years, it held, had severed that connection.
“Viewed from any angle, the impugned order does not sustain in the eyes of law,” the court observed, quashing the detention order and allowing the petition.
