In a first, Jammu and Kashmir High Court orders Rs 5-lakh relief for man ‘illegally detained’ under Public Safety Act

“This court cannot resist but to hold that the preventive detention of the petitioner is mala fide and illegal, ab origine and ab intra. The petitioner has been made to suffer loss of his liberty for a cumulative period of more than 1,080 days of preventive custody, covered under the span of four detention orders in a row from 2019 to March 2024,” Justice Rahul Bharti said in his judgement.

The judgement, pronounced on April 3, was uploaded on Friday. “(The) latest preventive detention of the petitioner is compounding the illegality, attending the breach and violation of the petitioner’s fundamental right to personal liberty with impunity, and that entitles him to compensation. Therefore, this court, drawing support from the judgement of the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India… reckons this to be a fit case for this court to exercise its constitutional jurisdiction to extend constitutional remedy for grant of compensation in favour of the petitioner for illegal infringement of his fundamental right to personal liberty,” it stated.

While the petitioner, Ali Mohammad Lone alias Advocate Zahid Ali, had sought a compensation of Rs 25 lakh, the court directed the state to pay Rs 5 lakh.

Ali was first detained under the PSA on March 5, 2019. The detention was quashed by the court on July 11, 2019. Eight days after the release order and while being still under detention, the government slapped another PSA against him on July 19, 2019, which was again quashed by the court on March 3, 2020. After remaining out of jail for three months, the government slapped the PSA against Ali for the third consecutive time on June 29, 2020, which was quashed by the court on February 24, 2021. The fourth detention order is dated September 14, 2022.

The court also made critical observations about the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) and the District Magistrate, Pulwama, for not bothering to read the previous orders quashing the PSA before passing the fourth detention order.

The court observed: “If three judgments of this court quashing preventive detention have not been spared a passing glance, lest an application of mind, by the SSP, the District Magistrate, and the Govt. of UT of J&K, how can it be claimed by the three authorities that the fourth-time preventive detention of the petitioner is an outcome of an open and fair mindset acting upon changed factual scenario.”

“Suffice to say that preventive detention of the petitioner is afflicted surely with malice in law, if not malice in fact… The very fact that dossier and the detention order are of same date, that is 14/09/2022, is a testament to the fact that preventive detention of the petitioner was an outcome of a preconceived mindset, and that was to somehow keep chained the petitioner to jail bars even if without any conviction in a criminal case,” the court observed.

The order said that the court had quashed the three previous detentions of the petitioner not on technical grounds but on the merits of the case.