8 months after midnight arrest, J-K High Court orders release of Kashmir Bar Association president: Allegations vague, govt didn’t apply mind

The court said that the constitutional right available under Article 22(5) of the Constitution of India stands infringed in this case. “Besides this, there has been total non-application of mind on the part of detaining authority in passing the impugned order of detention, as the allegations made in the grounds of detention, particularly those relating to his recent activities, are vague and ambiguous,” the order said. “The same are not even supported by any material in the form of intelligence report, etc, to lend some sort of credence to these allegations. The subjective satisfaction arrived at by the detaining authority, in these circumstances, has become a casualty.”

Ronga was arrested on July 11 during a midnight raid by the police at his Srinagar residence. He was later booked under the PSA and sent to a Jammu jail.

Ronga has been the president of the High Court Bar Association several times and its chairman since 2020, when the government prevented the association from conducting annual elections. The last elections were conducted in 2018 and were due in September 2019 but couldn’t be held because of the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and the subsequent curfew.

When the Bar Association announced its elections in 2020, the government said the Bar’s constitution, which termed Kashmir as a disputed region, was not in consonance with the Constitution of India.

Ronga’s arrest came days after the Election Committee of the Bar Association again set the ball rolling for its elections after indicating that it had removed the contentious paragraph from its constitution.

The court, in its order, accused the government of “non-application of mind”.

While the prosecution cited the case of former Bar president Mian Abdul Qayoom, whose petition for the quashing of PSA was dismissed by the court, Justice Dhar said it is not applicable in this case.

“In the present case, the detaining authority has not referred to any intelligence reports… In fact, the detention record produced before this court does not contain any intelligence report that would go on to show that the petitioner has continued to hold the same ideology for which he was detained in the year 2019,” the court said.