Listen to this article:

Srinagar: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has quashed two preventive detention orders over the last week, saying that such extraordinary powers must be invoked only in exceptional circumstances and not as a routine administrative measure.

The court’s orders relate to two cases, one filed under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA), which allows detention without trial for up to two years and the other related to the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1988 (PIT NDPS).

A single-judge bench of Justice Rahul Bharti quashed detention orders against Seerat-ul-Hassan Dhar of Srinagar under the PSA and against Adnan Rasool Ganie under the PIT NDPS. He directed their immediate release unless required in any other case. While Dhar’s release was ordered on July 9, the order in Ganie’s petition came on July 13.

In Dhar’s case under the PSA, the court also came down heavily on the Union Territory authorities, observing that they had acted with a “preconceived intention” to keep him behind bars and describing the detention as a “sheer abuse of process of law.”

Originally introduced to curb timber smuggling, the PSA has over the decades been increasingly used against alleged militants, separatists, political activists, protesters and, in some cases, alleged drug peddlers.

According to the high court’s e-court web site, the pendency of PSA cases has risen sharply in recent years, particularly in Kashmir, where two cases from 2023 are pending, seven from 2024, 115 from 2025 and 78 from 2026. At the Jammu bench of the High Court, two PSA cases are pending from 2023, four from 2024, 13 from 2025 and 40 from 2026.

The PSA detention against Dhar was first issued in September 2022. The high court quashed that detention........

© The Wire