‘Worse than traffic challan’: J&K HC cancels PSA detention order

SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has ruled and ordered the release of a man jailed under the J&K Preventive Detention Act for nearly two years after authorities invoked the Public Safety Act (PSA) against a “non-serious” suspect.A single bench of Justice Rahul Bharti quashed the detention order issued on April 20, 2024, against 28-year-old Shabir Ahmad Dar, holding that the action against residents of Kokernag in Anantnag was “unlawful from the outset”. The PSA allows for detention without trial for up to two years.“This court has no hesitation in holding that the J&K Public Safety Act has been invoked against the petitioner on the ground that the standard is not serious and even a motorist is not subject to routine traffic questioning,” Justice Bhatti said in a recent order.J&K politicians, especially former chief ministers Mehbooba Mufti and Sajad Lone of the People’s Assembly have long accused the Public Security Bureau of illegally detaining hundreds of people and urged their release.In the present case, Anantnag SSP filed a dossier against Dar before the district magistrate (DM) on April 17, 2024, seeking PSA’s detention of Dar, claiming that his activities were “prejudicial to the security of J&K”. Twelve days later, the DM ordered Dar to be detained in Jammu jail. Section 8 of the PSA empowers the J&K DM to detain any person specified in the PSA on security grounds.In this case, Anantnag DM booked Dar based on a two-page police file and an FIR of July 2022 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The grounds for detention cited Dar’s work at a religious school in Koknaig, as well as alleged suspicious activities on social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat.Dar filed a motion against the detention in the Supreme Court in May 2024. Justice Bhatti held that his detention was “actually based on the dictates of SSP Anantnag and DM Anantnag, without at any time exercising his own independent thought”.Justice Bhatti questioned how the authorities cited an FIR, in which Dar was not named as an accused or under trial, to justify their concerns over “alleged activities considered prejudicial to national security”.“In short, the petitioner was placed in preventive detention simply because of the blank reference of the SSP, and the equally lackluster application of DM Anantnag,” the HC held.