Srinagar, Jul 15: The High Court of J&K and Ladakh has quashed the detention of two persons under Public Safety Act (PSA) and ordered their immediate release from custody.
Allowing their separate habeas corpus pleas, a bench of Justice Rahul Bharti quashed preventive detention of Seerat-ul-Hassan Dhar of Srinagar and Adnan Rasool Ganie of Shopian.
After hearing advocate Tuba Manzoor Ahmad for the petitioner and the government through its counsel, the court while deciding Dhar’s case observed that the authorities had acted with a “preconceived intention” to keep him behind bars and describing the detention as a “sheer abuse of process of law.” “The petitioner’s preventive detention is nothing but a sheer abuse of process of law resorted to by the Senior Superintendent of Police, (SSP) Srinagar complimented by the respondent No. 2- District Magistrate, Srinagar and confirmed by the Home Department, Government of Jammu and Kashmir without any respect to the constitutional sensitivity which is meant to attend exercise of power in the matter of carrying out preventive detention custody of a citizen and which is not meant to come as a matter of routine and ritual but only as an exceptional exercise leaving no other option for the District Police/Administration other than getting the person deprived of his personal liberty.” The Court quashed the detention order dated October 11, 2024 and directed the authorities to restore him to his personal liberty forthwith “from the place of confinement wherever he was being kept held. The Court directed the Superintendent concerned of the Jail to act in abidance. The court also quashed the detention order dated May 3, 2025 under PSA against Aqib Mushtaq Lone passed by the District Magistrate, Shopian.
Meanwhile, the Court dismissed as infructuous a petition filed by Zahoor Ahmad Khan, noting that he had completed the full one-year period of preventive detention during the pendency of the case, leaving nothing for adjudication.
The Court ordered that if Khan had not already been released following the expiry of his detention period, he should be released forthwith, provided he was not required in connection with any other case or under any other valid detention order.
