S SABAQAT
EARLY TIMES REPORT
SRINAGAR, Mar 1: Observing that preventive detention is based on suspicion or not on proof, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has said that constitutional guarantees of various freedoms and personal liberty is not meant to be abused and misused so as to endanger and threaten the very foundation of free society.
“It is apposite to mention that our Constitution undoubtedly guarantees various freedoms and personal liberty to all persons in our Republic. However, it should be kept in mind by one and all that the constitutional guarantee of such freedoms and liberty is not meant to be abused and misused so as to endanger and threaten the very foundation of the pattern of our free society in which the guaranteed democratic freedom and personal liberty is designed to grow and flourish,” a bench of Justice Tashi Rabstan said while dismissing a petition against detention order under PSA.
“The larger interests of our multi-religious nation as a whole and the cause of preserving and securing to every person the guaranteed freedom peremptorily demand reasonable restrictions on the prejudicial activities of individuals which undoubtedly jeopardise the rightful freedoms of the rest of the society,” the court said, adding, “Main object of Preventive Detention 39 is the security of a State, maintenance of public order and of supplies and services essential to the community demand, effective safeguards in the larger interest of sustenance of peaceful democratic way of life.”
To sum up, the court said, a law of preventive detention is not invalid because it prescribes no objective standard for ordering preventive detention, and leaves the matter to subjective satisfaction of the Executive.
Having said that, the court said, subjective satisfaction of a detaining authority to detain a person or not, is not open to objective assessment by a Court.
“A Court is not a proper forum to scrutinise the merits of administrative decision to detain a person. The Court cannot substitute its own satisfaction for that of the authority concerned and decide whether its satisfaction was reasonable or proper, or whether in the circumstances of the matter, the person concerned should have been detained or not”.
It is often said and held that the Courts do not even go into the question whether the facts mentioned in grounds of detention are correct or false, the court said. |
