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Congratulations, Sonam Wangchuk, on the government’s revocation of the preventive detention order passed against you.

Congratulations, Gitanjali Angmo, for contesting, against all odds, the habeas corpus petition filed by you in the Supreme Court for the release of Sonam Wangchuk. As they say, persistence sometimes pays. However, no congratulations yet to Sonam Wangchuk’s legal team because the battle for his freedom is not over. I say this for several reasons. 

An order of preventive detention can be passed by the detaining authority only by invoking a draconian law such as the National Security Act (NSA) or the Public Safety Act (PSA) or, as in the past, the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). Such draconian laws have been described as a necessary evil. Therefore, an order of preventive detention should never be passed because the detaining authority has the power to do so; it should only be passed for compelling and objective reasons to prevent a public order or national security situation arising in the more or less immediate future. Otherwise, a preventive detention order becomes not a misuse of power, but an abuse of power. If a draconian power is abused, consequences must follow to prevent recurrent abuse.

‘Not punitive detention’

An order of preventive detention is not passed for a crime committed, but for the prevention of a crime, hence the term “preventive detention” and not punitive detention. It is passed not because a person has committed an offence, however serious or grave it may be. This is because an offensive act can be punished under the law of the land; that’s what the rule of law is all about. It is passed to prevent a person from committing an act prejudicial to public order (not law and order) or national security. By definition, therefore, a preventive detention order is passed on a reasonable prognosis that a person is more than likely to create a situation by which public tranquillity or national security will probably be endangered, not that it has........

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