Srinagar, Oct. 10, KDC: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has quashed a Public Safety Act (PSA) detention order against an Anantnag resident at the pre-execution stage, holding that an unexplained delay between the alleged unlawful activities and the issuance of the preventive detention order snaps the requisite “live and proximate link.”
A single bench of Justice Rajesh Sekhri allowed the writ petition filed by Gulzar Ahmad Bhat, setting aside the detention order passed by the District Magistrate, Anantnag, on January 30, 2025.
The police dossier alleged that Bhat had a history of criminal cases (FIRs in 2017 and 2018, in which he had been bailed out) and was involved in an FIR registered in January 2024 under Sections 10 and 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The police claimed he was a member of the banned Tahreek-e-Hurriyat and was arranging finances and logistic support for the organization. Despite these allegations, the police admitted that due to insufficient evidence, Bhat was not formally arrested in the UAPA case but was merely bound down and released on a surety bond.
More than a year after the last alleged activity in January 2024, the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Anantnag, proposed his detention under the PSA on January 21, 2025. The District Magistrate passed the detention order nine days later. The executing agency subsequently failed to arrest Bhat for over four months until the High Court stayed the order.
The Union Territory administration argued that the petition was not maintainable as Bhat had evaded arrest and had no locus standi to challenge the order before surrendering.
Rejecting the government’s contention, Justice Sekhri relied on the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Additional Secretary to Government of India vs. Alka Subash Gadia (1992), maintaining that high courts can intervene in preventive detention cases at the pre-execution stage if the order is passed on vague, extraneous, or irrelevant grounds.
Scrutinizing the timeline, the Court held that the prolonged and unexplained delays at multiple stages—sponsoring the detention, passing the order, and executing it—fatally compromised the state’s justification for preventive custody.
“If the sponsoring officer was actually and genuinely concerned about anti-national activities of the petitioner, he was expected to act with greater promptitude in sponsoring his detention, and the detaining authority was expected to be even more concerned in making the detention order immediately after his detention was proposed…,” the Court said, adding, “Such unreasonable and unexplained delay on the part of both the sponsoring officer and the detaining authority to ensure immediate detention of petitioner, does not commensurate to the fact situation of the case. It throws a considerable doubt not only on the genuineness of the requisite satisfaction of the detaining authority but also on the credibility of the sponsoring officer.”
The High Court concluded that the inordinate delay severed the legal justification for the detention, rendering the impugned order vitiated and liable to be quashed.
The petitioner, Gulzar Ahmad Bhat, was represented by Advocate Wajid Mohammad Haseeb, while the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and other respondents, including the District Magistrate and Senior Superintendent of Police, Anantnag, were represented by Government Advocate Ilyas Nazir Laway. (KDC)
