J&K High Court quashes PSA detention order, finding two-year execution delay snapped link to alleged activities

On 25 June 2022, the District Magistrate, Anantnag, ordered the petitioner’s preventive detention under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA), relying on a police dossier alleging that he was an Over Ground Worker of the banned outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed and had supported militants.

The dossier referred to an earlier PSA detention, which had been quashed, and a 2019 FIR. The petitioner challenged the order before its execution; the High Court stayed it on 11 September 2024.

The Court noted that the petitioner had continued attending proceedings in the NIA Court and that the authorities had made no serious effort to execute the order for over two years.

1. Whether the detention order could be challenged at the pre-execution stage on the grounds that it was made for a wrong purpose or on vague, extraneous, or irrelevant grounds.

2. Whether the unexplained delay of over two years in executing the detention order severed the live and proximate link between the petitioner’s past conduct and the asserted need for preventive detention.

Under the PSA, preventive detention must be supported by the detaining authority’s legally sustainable satisfaction.

In Additional Secretary to Government of India v. Alka Subhash Gadia, 1992 (1) SCC 496, the Supreme Court recognised that a court may review a detention order before execution in limited circumstances, including where the order is made for a wrong purpose or rests on vague, extraneous, or irrelevant grounds.

The validity of preventive detention also depends on a live and proximate link between the person’s past activities and the present need for detention; unexplained delay may snap that link.

The Court found that the detention order rested on the apprehension that the petitioner’s alleged allegiance to a banned outfit made it risky to leave him at liberty during the forthcoming Amarnath Yatra.

Yet the petitioner was attending proceedings in the solitary 2019 FIR cited against him, and the record disclosed no serious effort to execute the order for more than two years.

The Court held that the stated basis for detention was vague and that the order had been passed for a wrong purpose, bringing the case within the recognised pre-execution grounds in Alka Subhash Gadia.

Further, the unexplained execution delay had severed the live and proximate link between the alleged past activities and the need to detain the petitioner at that later time.

It held that the order was unsustainable both because it was made for a wrong purpose and on vague, extraneous, or irrelevant grounds, and because the prolonged unexplained delay in execution had snapped the live and proximate link required for preventive detention.