Srinagar: The J&K High Court on Friday quashed Public Safety Act (PSA) detention orders against five Kashmiri men.
The detention order under PSA against Khalid Hussain Malik was quashed by the High Court after the government admitted that the detention order was passed on 18 March, 2018, but was executed on 4 August, 2019, while the FIRs against Malik were registered in 2017.
The court said that the gap between the issuing of the PSA detention order and its execution was almost a year and six months, which could not be sustained in the eyes of law.
The court said that in the absence of proper explanation for why a period of 15 months elapsed after issuing the order of detention, the same had to be set aside.
In case of Farooq Ahmad Malik, the court recorded that the petitioner was already in custody and this fact was well known to the detaining authority and despite that, the detention order dated 4 July 2019 was executed after more than three months of its issuance, on 21 October, 2019, which clearly violated Article 22(5) of the Constitution of India as well as Section 13 of the Act.
In this regard, the court reiterated that the detaining authority must satisfactorily explain the inordinate delay in executing the detention order; otherwise the subjective satisfaction gets vitiated and renders the detention as illegal.
In cases of Asif Ahmad Malik, Mohammad Yousuf Bhat and Saboor-ul-Haq Malla, the court quashed the detention orders on the grounds that the detenues were not supplied with relevant material to make an effective representation, which is their constitutional right under Article 22 (5) of the Indian Constitution.

NUSRAT SIDIQ