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Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court has held that a youngster from Anantnag district was taken into preventive detention last year “purely on hollowed dubiety” by the civil and police administration. 

While ordering the release of Sehran Bashir Nadaf, 19, a resident of south Kashmir who was detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA), the court said in its order on March 25:

“Personal liberty of a citizen of India guaranteed under Article 21 of the constitution of India is not meant to be a matter of skating on a thin ice that at any given point of time a person can be tripped to suffer deprivation and loss (of rights).”

“Personal liberty of a citizen of India guaranteed under Article 21 of the constitution of India is not meant to be a matter of skating on a thin ice that at any given point of time a person can be tripped to suffer deprivation and loss (of rights).”

The court observed that the then deputy commissioner (DC) of Anantnag Fakhrudin Hamid and the district’s senior superintendent of police acted on “unfounded and mirage like suspicion” to detain the youngster.

The PSA dossier prepared by Anantnag police alleges that Nadaf who was taken into preventive custody on May 18 last year was involved in “activities prejudicial to the security of the state”. 

A habeas corpus petition was filed by Nadaf’s mother Nayeema Akhtar on June 17 last year challenging her son’s detention under the stringent legislation which has been termed as a “lawless law” by Amnesty International.

After the arguments concluded in the case last week, the court of Justice Rahul Bharti ruled that Nadaf’s preventive detention was “illegal” under law. “The petitioner is directed to be restored to his personal liberty forthwith by his release from the concerned jail.”

According to the PSA dossier, Nadaf allegedly opened fire at Deepak Kumar, a labourer, during a fair organised in Amusement Park near Government Medical College in Anantnag on May 29 2023. 

The police investigators alleged that the pistol used by Nadaf was procured from a second suspect in the case who has also been arrested in the case.

Kumar, a resident of Udhampur district, succumbed at a hospital where he was taken for treatment following which a case was filed at Anantnag police station (FIR No.171/2023) under sections 302 of Indian Penal Code, sections 7/27 of Arms Act 1959 and sections 16, 18, 20 and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. 

The killing took place in the backdrop of a spate of targeted and brutal attacks on the migrant workers and Kashmiri Pandits in the valley which sent shockwaves across the country. 

Nadaf was a minor when he was taken into custody as the main suspect in Kumar’s killing. 

Five more suspects from Anantnag and Shopian districts were also arrested in the case while a smartphone shop ‘The Game Modification’ which was allegedly used in planning the shootout was also seized under the provisions of the anti-terror law in November 2023. 

All the six suspects were accused of being members of ‘Kashmir Freedom Fighters’, a newly-floated militant outfit which sprung up in Jammu and Kashmir in the years after the reading down of Article 370. 

During the trial, Nadaf confessed to his involvement in the crime and after spending nearly two years behind bars, he was bailed out on February 4 last year by the Juvenile Justice Board Anantnag. 

However, the Union territory administration booked him under the PSA nearly three months after his release. 

The 20-page PSA dossier vaguely alleges that Nadaf was involved in “anti-national activities” while blaming him for continuing to support militants and “indulging in the activities prejudicial for maintenance of the security of the state”.

While the PSA dossier seeks to play up the alleged confession of Nadaf in Kumar’s killing to paint him as a perpetrator, the court ruled that the crime by a juvenile can’t be considered to implicate him “within the scope of mischief of the J&K Public Safety Act, 1978”.

“It is only during the period of three months’ personal liberty state that the petitioner’s alleged state of activities are meant to be referred to but then in the name of facts there is worth nothing in the entire dossier to justify the concern” of the Anantnag police and “no basis for Anantnag deputy commissioner to reciprocate the (police) plea,” the court ruled. 

The court observed that the comparative reading of the PSA dossier and grounds of the detention are “much of a muchness” where the “jurisdiction under the PSA right from its origin (by SSP Anantnag who prepared the dossier) … (to the) issuance of detention order” by DC Anantnag was “on a wrong foot”.

“To put it in simple words, the petitioner has been detained just for nothing but purely on hollowed dubiety” by the DC Anantnag and the SSP Anantnag, the high court observed.

Thousands of J&K residents, most of them from Kashmir valley, have been detained since the controversial legislation was enacted in 1978. 

Human rights groups and legal experts have been consistently urging the government to abolish the law under which a person can be detained without trial for up to two years. 

Although the legislation was rolled out in 1978 to curb timber smuggling in J&K by then chief minister Sheikh Abdullah, the first person to be booked under the PSA was Kashmir Motor Drivers Association president Ghulam Nabi who contested the 1977 J&K assembly election against Abdullah. 

Since then, the controversial law has become a legal weapon for successive governments in Jammu and Kashmir to curb dissent and rival political ideologies, according to human rights groups.

© The Wire