Kashmir Impulse Desk
Srinagar, Sep 05
The High Court has quashed the preventive detention of a man under the Public Safety Act, saying possession of books with “dispiriting titles” did not by itself justify invoking preventive detention.
Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi set aside the detention order issued by the Kupwara district magistrate against Shafat Maqbool Wani of Kukroosa Vilgam.
Wani had challenged the order, arguing that the authorities had acted mechanically and relied largely on an FIR registered at Police Station Handwara, in which he had already been granted bail.
The authorities had alleged that anti-national literature was recovered from Wani, including books that they said were authored by him.
The court found that the detention grounds did not demonstrate any subversive activity by Wani and said the detaining authority had failed to establish a basis for preventive detention.
The court also rejected the authorities’ reliance on an alleged separatist ideology that Wani was said to have developed because his father had surrendered as a former militant in 1990, describing the reasoning as unsupported.
It noted that the literature cited by the authorities had been wrongly attributed to Wani as works authored by him.
The court said Wani, as an academic scholar, could reasonably be expected to possess a variety of literary works and held that possession of books with “dispiriting titles” did not automatically make him a criminal warranting preventive detention.
Allowing the petition, the court quashed the detention order and directed that Wani be released from preventive custody forthwith.
