The petitioner, Jaffar Ahmad Parray, a resident of south Kashmir’s Shopian, was booked under the PSA last year and had challenged his detention in court

“A district magistrate acting under the regime of J&K Public Safety Act, 1978, or for that matter even the Government of UT of J&K, is not supposed to parrot the police dictated version in the dossier and serve detention order on a platter,” reads the order. (Representative/ Express file photo by Shuaib Masoodi)

By Bashaarat Masood

Quashing the detention of a Kashmir resident under the Public Safety Act (PSA), the Jammu and Kashmir High Court has observed that to support this “would be to concede to the scenario that India is a police state, which it is not”.

The court highlighted that in a democratic country like India, “which is governed by the rule of law”, police and magistracy cannot pick up and interrogate a person without registration of a case against him.

This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.