High Court quashes advocate’s Public Safety Act detention, orders payment of Rs 5 lakh compensation

Our Correspondent

Srinagar, April 27

The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has quashed the detention of advocate Ali Mohammad Lone, terming the order issued under the Public Safety Act (PSA) illegal and unjustified. The court directed the UT of J&K to pay Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the petitioner. The court directed the superintendent of the jail concerned to release the petitioner from the prison.

Detained for 1,080 days

“The petitioner has been made to suffer the loss of his liberty for a cumulative period of more than 1,080 days...He was detained under four orders issued in a row from 2019 to March-end,” the court noted.

A single-judge Bench of Justice Rahul Bharti said, “This court cannot resist, but to hold that the preventive detention of the petitioner is mala fide and illegal, ab origine and ab intra.” “The petitioner has been made to suffer the loss of his liberty for a cumulative period of more than 1,080 days...He was detained under four orders issued in a row from 2019 to March-end.”

Lone’s initial detention under the PSA began on March 3, 2019, on the order issued by the District Magistrate, Ganderbal, who cited concerns over his purported activities “prejudicial to the security of the state”. Despite the HC quashing the order in July 2019, Lone was detained once again on July 19, 2019, merely six days after the first order was annulled. This time the detention order was issued by the District Magistrate, Pulwama. This pattern persisted, with Lone being detained on March 3, 2020, and again on June 29, 2020, on similar pretexts. Each time, the HC quashed the detention orders, citing a lack of legal evidence.

The present judgment came on a petition challenging the preventive detention order issued by the District Magistrate, Pulwama, on September 14, 2022. The petitioner was booked after the Pulwama SSP’s dossier said if Lone was left to “enjoyment of his fundamental right to personal liberty then he will indulge in activities prejudicial to the security of the state”.

The dossier said the petitioner “joined Jamaat-e-Islami upon being influenced by the written literature of Qadi Awda of Egypt”. The petitioner is referred to have contested the Assembly election in 1987 as a candidate of the Muslim Muthid Mahaz from the Pampore constituency.

However, the court said three successive preventive detention orders against the petitioner were quashed. It said, “The passing of the present detention order, fourth in a row, was just a matter of doing paperwork by the District Magistrate to carry out lip service to claim that the curtailment of the personal liberty of the petitioner is not extra-legal”. “Although the petitioner has claimed compensation of Rs 25 lakh, the court holds that a compensation of Rs 5 lakh would meet the ends of justice... besides holding and declaring the preventive detention of the petitioner illegal, the court holds that the petitioner is entitled to compensation of Rs 5 lakh,” the HC said.

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