Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir High Court has quashed detention order under Public Safety Act, passed by deputy commissioner Kupwara on 16 August 2016 against of a youth from north Kashmir district who according to government was evading arrest for one year.
The order (11-DMK/PSA of 2016) against the youth—Javaid Ahmad Shah—was also stayed by the court on 14 October 2016.
“The object of preventive custody is to stop a person from indulging in activities in present case prejudicial to the maintenance of the public order. So after one year normally there is no scope of keeping the (detainee) in preventive custody. From 2016 till date no fresh activities attributable to the (Shah) have been brought to the notice of the Court,” a bench of Justice Mohammad YAqoob Mir observed.
Additional Advocate General M A Rathore submitted that Shah has been evading arrest and he could not be taken into custody.
On asking of the court, the AAG could not show from the records that Shah has indulged in any such activities from last one and half year. “When it is so the object of prevention is automatically achieved,” the court said, underling that the order otherwise has lapsed because the order has been passed on 10 August 2016, it has to remain valid for a period of 12 days from the date of order in case it is not approved as is mandate of Section 8(iv) of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978. “Same was rightly pointed out by the counsel for (Shah),” the court said.
While interpreting the period of 12 days, the high court in previous judgements held: “State counsel’s plea that the period of twelve days would commence not from the date of issuance of the orders by these officers but from the date of actual detention of the person sought to be detained, does not appears to be, prima facie, tenable in view of the explicit language employed in the section, which may not admit of any other interpretation than, that the twelve days would commence from the date of the making of the order and not from the date of the detention of the person concerned.”
Since the order of detention has already lapsed, the court accordingly quashed it.
