HC quashes man’s PSA detention: DM can’t parrot cop version, India not a police state

QUASHING THE detention of a Kashmir resident under the Public Safety Act (PSA), the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has observed that to support this “would be to concede to the scenario that India is a police state, which it is not”.

The court highlighted that in a democratic country like India, "which is governed by the rule of law", police and magistracy cannot pick up and interrogate a person without registration of a case against him.

The petitioner, Jaffar Ahmad Parray, a resident of south Kashmir's Shopian, was booked under the PSA last year and had challenged his detention in court.

“To believe this version of the respondent number 2 (District Magistrate, Shopian), as cited and highlighted in the grounds of detention in support of the detention order, would be to concede to the scenario that India is a policestate,whichotherwiseitisnot by any stretch of imagination or claim,” reads the order by Justice Rahul Bharti dated March 22, which was uploaded yesterday.

Justice Bharti observed that the grounds of detention are dominated by the “verbatim reproduction of (police) dossier contents”, and there is not a single reference about whether or not the petitioner is involved in a case registered at any police station. "That means there is no antecedent culpability to the acts and conduct on the part of the petitioner," reads the order.

The court asked that in case there is no case against the petitioner, under what law was he picked up and interrogated. "There is a vitiating fact in the very grounds of detention, which is worth serious notice, and that is the petitioner is admittedly not mentioned to be involved in a registered criminal acts of omission or commission… otherwise there would have been a mention of said fact in the dossier of the Senior Superintendent of Police, Shopian, and in the grounds of detention in support of the order of detention passed by the District Magistrate, Shopian. But still, it is expressly mentioned in the grounds of detention by the

District Magistrate that by the interrogation of the petitioner, it stood revealed that the petitioner was a hardcore OGW (over-ground worker) of active terrorists of LET/HM outfits operating in district Shopian and further revealing that the petitioner was in contact with the active militants of district Shopian,” reads the judgement.

“Now, if the petitioner came out allegedly divulging all the adversefactsagainsthisownselfduringinterrogation,thenthedossier by the SSP Shopian and the grounds of detention framed by the District Magistrate ought to have put on record under which authority of law the petitioner came to be first picked up, by whom, and then by whom subjectedtoso-calledinterrogationso as to make alleged revelations as cited in the grounds of detention bythedistrictmagistrate,”itstates.

“In India, which is a democratic country governed by rule of law, it cannot be heard to be said bythepoliceandthedistrictmagistracy that a citizen was picked up to be interrogated without any registration of a criminal case against him, and from that purported interrogation, a case for preventive detention was found to be made out against the petitioner,” reads the order.

“A district magistrate acting under the regime of J&K Public Safety Act, 1978, or for that matter even the Government of UT of J&K, is not supposed to parrot the police dictated version in the dossier and serve detention order on a platter,” reads the order.