The J&K and Ladakh High Court has set aside another detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA), saying there was “no application of mind” by the Bandipora SSP and the District Magistrate, “except a unity of mind that the petitioner needs to be detained on one false pretext or another”.
The court observed that the action was “unmindful of the constitutional obligation of resorting to preventive detention with due caution and circumspection”.
Pointing out that the dossier as well as the grounds of detention are exact replicas of each other, Justice Rahul Bharti ordered the superintendent of the concerned jail to release Ehtsham ul Haq Dar if he is not required in any other case.
Dar was detained under the PSA on May 6 last year following an order issued by the Bandipora District Magistrate, and was later lodged at Kishtwar jail.
The Public Safety Act Advisory Board vide order dated June 2, 2025, held that his preventive detention was based on sufficient cause, after which the government ordered him to be detained initially for three months with effect from May 6, 2025. After the expiry of three months, the petitioner’s detention was extended by another three months, up to November 5 last year.
Pointing out that the detention record does not bear any further extension of the petitioner’s detention, Justice Bharti observed that when the court examined the basis of his preventive detention, it “cannot escape from the fact that the entire edifice is based on vague and conjectured assumptions without any iota of factual content”, except a criminal case relating to an FIR.
Nothing has been specified, “whether the trial of the said case has ended or is still in currency, meaning thereby, the Senior Superintendent of Police, Bandipora, and District Magistrate, Bandipora, did not have the concern and anxiety to fetch and provide full details relatable with the petitioner before venturing to curtail his personal liberty,” observed Justice Rahul Bharti.
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Referring to the police dossier that formed the basis of subjective satisfaction of the District Magistrate to detain Dar under PSA, Justice Bharti observed, “The only criminal antecedent reported against the petitioner is of a criminal case borne out of FIR No. 30/2020 of Police Station, Aragam, by reference to which the petitioner is said to have been enlarged on bail but without any further recital as to the status of the case.”
“Furthermore, the dossier bears a very vague reference that the petitioner was earlier detained under the Public Safety Act on March 6, 2021, and released on March 5, 2022, after the expiry of the detention period, without bearing any mention about the detention order so passed in 2021,” the judge added.
The dossier had profiled the petitioner as being a participant in “anti-national activities”, allegedly as an overground worker (OGW) of a banned terrorist organisation, Justice Bharti observed. He added that, “literally lifting the print and text of the dossier, the District Magistrate, Bandipora, purportedly formulated the so-called grounds of detention more as a mouthpiece of the Senior Superintendent of Police, Bandipora, and passed the detention order”.
“A fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India is not so fragile and weak-footed that by purported reference to any casual exercise at the end of the authorities under the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978, the said fundamental right of the petitioner can be uprooted,” the judge observed while ordering the release of Dar from jail.
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Last Wednesday, Justice Bharti had ordered the release of a PSA detainee, Mudasir Ahmad Bhat, from Udhampur district jail, holding that the preventive detention inflicted upon him “is painful and pinching to the very constitutional sensitivity with which preventive detention jurisdiction is supposed to be exercised and carried out”.
