The Jammu and Kashmir High Court, while quashing the detention of a 26-year-old man, Jaffar Ahmad Parray, under the Public Safety Act, reminded the Shopian district magistrate that India is not a police state where citizens can be detained solely at the prompt of the police.
Justice Rahul Bharti, in a judgment passed on March 22 and uploaded on the High Court website on Monday, ordered the immediate release of Parray.
Parray had been held in Baramulla jail since May on the order of the Shopian district magistrate, based on a recommendation from the Senior Superintendent of Police, Shopian. The police dossier labelled him as "a hardcore OGW [Over Ground Worker]" of terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
However, the High Court found that the grounds of detention were primarily a verbatim reproduction of the police dossier. Justice Bharti emphasized that there was no mention of Parray's involvement in any case registered under FIR, indicating a lack of antecedent culpability.
The court criticized the absence of documentation regarding the authority under which Parray was initially detained and interrogated
Justice Bharti emphasized that India operates under the rule of law, stressing that citizens cannot be subjected to interrogation without a formal case being filed against them. The judge asserted that endorsing the district magistrate's rationale would imply conceding to a scenario where India is characterized as a police state, a description which he firmly rejected as unsubstantiated by any evidence or argument.
The High Court deemed Parray's preventive detention as "illegal and coercive" at its very root and ordered his immediate release.