J&K High Court quashes PSA detention order over unexplained year-long delay between alleged activity and detention proposal

The District Magistrate, Anantnag, made a preventive-detention order against Gulzar Ahmad Bhat under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978, on 30 January 2025, on a proposal submitted by the Senior Superintendent of Police on 21 January 2025.

The proposal relied principally on an alleged incident of 10 January 2024, involving alleged links to the banned organisation Tahreek-e-Hurriyat and registration of an FIR under Sections 10 and 13 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

The petitioner challenged the order at the pre-execution stage, including on grounds of delay in proposing, making and executing it.

The respondents opposed the petition, arguing, among other things, that the petitioner could not challenge the order before surrendering.

Whether the petitioner could challenge the detention order before its execution.

Whether the delay between the alleged activity, the detention proposal, the making of the detention order and its execution severed the live and proximate link and vitiated the order.

Under the Public Safety Act, 1978, a preventive-detention order must rest on a live and proximate link between the person’s past conduct and the need for detention. Unreasonable and unexplained delay in making or executing an order may cast doubt on the detaining authority’s subjective satisfaction and vitiate the detention; the same principle applies to delay between the proposal and the making of the order.

Under Additional Secretary to Government of India v. Alka Subhash Gadia, 1992 (1) SCC 496, a court may entertain a pre-execution challenge in limited circumstances, including where the order is passed for a wrong purpose or on vague, extraneous or irrelevant grounds.

Suresh Mahato v. District Magistrate, Burdwan, (1975) 3 SCC 554; Sushanta Kumar Banik v. State of Tripura, citation as stated in the judgment.

The Court held that pre-execution review was available in a proper case and proceeded to examine the challenge.

The alleged conduct central to the proposal dated 21 January 2025 related to an incident of 10 January 2024, yet the sponsoring authority had not proposed detention for more than a year.

The detaining authority then took nine days to issue the order, and the executing agency had not executed it for more than four months.

The Court found these delays unexplained and inconsistent with the asserted urgency of preventing the petitioner’s activities. Taken together, they severed the live and proximate link between the alleged conduct and the need for detention, casting doubt on the genuineness of the requisite satisfaction.

The petition was disposed of along with the connected application.