Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi said that mere possession of books with “dispiriting titles” and authored by someone else is not sufficient to invoke preventive detention laws, particularly when the authorities fail to demonstrate any specific subversive or prejudicial activity attributable to the persons.
The Court made the observation while quashing a preventive detention order issued under the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act against academic scholar Shafat Maqbool Wani, who had been detained on the basis of allegations of involvement in anti-national activities and possession of alleged anti-national literature.
These included books titled “Construction of an Islamic Order in Hindutva Reimagination” and “The Saffronization of Occupied Kashmir, Demystifying Hindutva Settlers, Colonial Designers.”"The alleged anti-national literature shown to have been seized from the detenue has also presumably weighed with the respondents to brand the detenue as an anti-national, however, the said literature has wrongly been attributed to the detenue having been authored by him.
The learned counsel for the petitioner is quite justified in submitting that the petitioner, being an academic scholar, is expected to be in possession of variety of literary means, therefore, a mere possession of the books with dispiriting titles does not ipso facto make the petitioner/ detenue a criminal against whom the preventive detention was required to be invoked," the Court observed.
Pertinently, the Court also said that the father of the dentenue being an ex-militant cannot be a reason to believe that the son might have been inculcated with the same separatist ideology, and such an assertion was "delusory".
Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi said that mere possession of books with “dispiriting titles” and authored by someone else is not sufficient to invoke preventive detention laws, particularly when the authorities fail to demonstrate any specific subversive or prejudicial activity attributable to the persons.
The Court made the observation while quashing a preventive detention order issued under the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act against academic scholar Shafat Maqbool Wani, who had been detained on the basis of allegations of involvement in anti-national activities and possession of alleged anti-national literature.
These included books titled “Construction of an Islamic Order in Hindutva Reimagination” and “The Saffronization of Occupied Kashmir, Demystifying Hindutva Settlers, Colonial Designers.”
"The alleged anti-national literature shown to have been seized from the detenue has also presumably weighed with the respondents to brand the detenue as an anti-national, however, the said literature has wrongly been attributed to the detenue having been authored by him. The learned counsel for the petitioner is quite justified in submitting that the petitioner, being an academic scholar, is expected to be in possession of variety of literary means, therefore, a mere possession of the books with dispiriting titles does not ipso facto make the petitioner/ detenue a criminal against whom the preventive detention was required to be invoked," the Court observed.
Pertinently, the Court also said that the father of the dentenue being an ex-militant cannot be a reason to believe that the son might have been inculcated with the same separatist ideology, and such an assertion was "delusory".
