New Delhi: The Jammu and Kashmir High Court has quashed the preventive detention of Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan and directed the Union Territory administration to set him free.
While delivering the judgement, a single bench of the High Court led by Justice V. C. Koul censured J&K authorities for refusing official documents to Sultan that could have enabled him to challenge his detention.
Terming his detention as “illegal and unsustainable”, the court also reprimanded the authorities for not furnishing any credible evidence in court, as required under law, to prolong the detention of Sultan under the Public Safety Act (PSA), which has been termed as a “lawless law” by Amnesty International.
“It is unambiguously clear and evident from perusal of receipt of grounds of detention and other relevant record that only five leaves have been given to detenu,” Justice Koul observed in his judgement.
The High Court noted that the authorities in Kashmir didn’t provide Sultan with the copies of the FIR, witness statements or other investigation material of the case which formed the basis for his preventive detention under the PSA.
Justice Koul asked the authorities to set Sultan free “forthwith provided he is not required in any other case.”
A controversial dossier
In its PSA dossier, authorities in Kashmir had accused the award-winning journalist of being an “over-ground worker of Hizbul Mujahideen” who curiously joined Al-Qaida affiliate, Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, while in jail.
The dossier also claimed that Sultan was working as an over-ground worker of The Resistance Front, a militant group which was set up months after Sultan’s arrest in 2018 and which authorities believe is an offshoot of Pakistan Lashkar-e-Toiba terror outfit.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here .