SRINAGAR: Even as Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has promised to scrap the stringent Public Safety Act (PSA) after the restoration of statehood, his lawyer sons Zamir Abdullah and Zaheer Abdullah have successfully got the PSA detention order of a Pulwama youth quashed by the J&K High Court.
The CM’s sons appeared on behalf of Mushtaq Ahmad Dar, the father-in-law of 27-year-old Sajad Ahmad Bhat, a resident of Drabgam in Pulwama district, who had been detained under the PSA through an order issued by the District Magistrate, Pulwama, dated April 30, 2025.
They had filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of the detained Sajad's father-in-law.
According to the detention order, Sajad was booked under preventive detention for his alleged involvement in case FIR No. 119 of 2020 registered at Police Station Rajpora for offences under Section 7/25 of the Indian Arms Act and Sections 18, 23, and 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).
However, Sajad’s counsels, Zamir and Zaheer Abdullah, argued that he had already been granted bail in the FIR by a competent court on November 13, 2023, and that the PSA detention was therefore unjustified and based on stale allegations.
In their submissions, the counsels pleaded before the court that the dossier was forwarded to the District Magistrate by the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Pulwama on April 28, 2025, and the detention order was issued merely two days later, on April 30.
This, they argued, showed that the detaining authority had not applied its independent mind to assess whether the activities of the detenu were actually prejudicial to public security, as required under the law.
The petitioners further submitted that the detention order relied solely on an FIR registered five years earlier, and that the authorities had failed to demonstrate how existing legal provisions under the substantive law were insufficient to prevent Sajad from engaging in unlawful activities alleged against his person.
After hearing the arguments, Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi referred to the Supreme Court judgment in Rekha v. State of Tamil Nadu [(2011) 5 SCC 244], which held that a preventive detention order cannot be justified if ordinary law is adequate to deal with the alleged acts of the detenu.
The court noted that the detention order against Sajad, issued in 2025 based on a 2020 FIR, was founded on “stale grounds” and lacked a proximate link between the alleged acts and the detention decision.
“The impugned order has been passed five years after the registration of the FIR and this fact goes on to suggest that there is no proximate link to the alleged actions of the detenu that were deemed to be prejudicial to the maintenance of security of the state. The apex court in various pronouncements has held that the detention order cannot sustain if there is no proximate link between the detenu and the alleged subversive actions of the detenu,” the judge observed.
Justice Kazmi observed that the petitioner had succeeded in establishing that the detention was not in accordance with statutory requirements.
“The impugned order of detention, being not in consonance with the law, deserves to be quashed,” the court ruled and directed to release the detenu forthwith, if not required in any other case.
