As per the data that this reporter was able to obtain, 507 High Court PSA pleas were filed in 2019, and 841 in 2022.
By SHAKIR MIR
The Jammu Kashmir and Ladakh (JK&L) High Court has invalidated a case filed under the Public Safety Act (PSA), the Union Territory’s strict preventive detention law, while directing the authorities to pay Rs five lakh rupees compensation to the detainee.
This, legal experts told The Quint, forms a rare occasion where the judiciary has not only delivered a sharp rebuke to the authorities for illegally detaining an individual under the law but also made a case for his restitution, bringing the debate over the controversial law back into the public domain.
As J&K gears up for elections, the use of the PSA has also turned into a poll plank of sorts with politicians coming to blows with each other over who booked more people under the PSA in the past.
“The petitioner has been made to suffer the loss of his liberty for a cumulative period of more than 1080 days of preventive custody covered under the span of four detention orders in a row from 2019 to ending March 2024,” the judgment by Justice Rahul Bharti in the case of Ali Mohammad Lone, an advocate and former spokesperson of the banned outfit Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), reaD
Lone was arrested just days after the Modi government outlawed JeI under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 in February 2019, on the grounds that it supported militancy in J&K.
This story was originally published in thequint.com. Read the full story here.
