SC says no to plea of Amritpal Singh against his NSA detention

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to entertain a plea filed by radical preacher and Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh challenging his detention under the National Security Act (NSA), 1980.

A Bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice NV Anjaria asked Amritpal to approach the Punjab and Haryana High Court with his plea. The top court asked the High Court to decide his plea within six weeks.

Amritpal (32), who won the Lok Sabha poll from Khadoor Sahib as an Independent candidate while being in jail, heads the Waris Punjab De outfit.

Amritpal, who was picked up from Rode village in Moga district on April 23, 2023, is currently lodged in a prison in Assam’s Dibrugarh district for alleged offences under the NSA.

On behalf of Amritpal, senior counsel Colin Gonsalves submitted that he had been under detention for the past two and a half years and the entire detention was based on an FIR in which a chargesheet had already been filed.

He pointed out that the top court recently entertained a petition filed by Gitanjali Angmo challenging the NSA detention of her husband and Ladakh social activist Sonam Wangchuk.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raj, representing the Centre, sought eight weeks to respond to Amritpal’s petition even as Gonsalves insisted that one month was good enough.

The Bench said it did not want to put pressure on High Court judges. “This matter... We are not entertaining, but we are permitting (the petitioner) to go before the High Court and we are requesting the High Court to dispose of it preferably within six weeks,” Justice Kumar told Raj.