Can NSA be invoked on 1 incident?: SC

Apex court remarks while hearing a petition of wife against her doctor husband’s detention in MP

The bench was hearing a plea filed by Aasefa Khan, challenging the Madhya Pradesh high court order of July 16, by which it had dismissed her habeas corpus petition challenging the detention of her husband under the NSA

New Delhi, Aug. 19: Can a single incident affect the public order enough to invoke National Security Act?, the Supreme Court said as it agreed on Thursday to examine a woman’s plea against her doctor-husband’s detention in Madhya Pradesh for allegedly black marketing anti-Covid Remdesivir injections in Indore.

A bench of Justices D.Y. Chandrachud and M.R. Shah issued notice to the Madhya Pradesh government and sought its response within two weeks.

We would like to examine this petition. Among various grounds raised in the plea, we will also examine can a single incident affect the public order enough to invoke the National Security Act, the bench said.

The bench was hearing a plea filed by Aasefa Khan, challenging the Madhya Pradesh high court order of July 16, by which it had dismissed her habeas corpus petition challenging the detention of her husband under the NSA.

It recorded the various grounds, mostly procedural, on which the detention is being challenged by the petitioner like the detenu was declared as absconding in the detention order dated May 19, whereas he was in jail since May 13.

The detention was also challenged on the ground that the documents referred by the

Superintendent of Police for recommending the doctor’s detention under NSA, 1980 were not forwarded to the detaining authority.

Aasefa has also said that the memorandum relied upon by the detaining authority was not supplied to the detenu and the valuable right of representation to the detaining authority was defeated due to delay in execution of detention order, and by the time it was served, it had been approved by the state government.

Advocate R.S. Chhabra, appearing for Aasefa, said that the high court erred in not appreciating the consequence of wrongful declaration of the detenu as absconding as due to this the statutory authorities formed an impression that detenu is liable to be punished under provision of NSA.

The plea filed through advocate P S Sudheer said, The high court further erred in not appreciating the fact that memorandum of section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, was referred to in the grounds of detention but was never served upon the detenu and thereby violating Article 22 (5) of the Constitution.