New Delhi, Sep 30: The Supreme Court on Friday said preventive detention is a serious invasion of personal liberty and therefore whatever little safeguards the Constitution and the law authorizing such action provide assume utmost importance and must be strictly adhered to.
A bench of Chief Justice UU Lalit and Justices S Ravindra Bhat and JB Pardiwala made these observations as it quashed an order of preventive detention passed by the Tripura government dated November 12, 2021 and directed forthwith release of an accused for offences under the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1988 (PIT NDPS).
“The preventive detention is a serious invasion of personal liberty and the normal methods open to a person charged with commission of any offence to disprove the charge or to prove his innocence at the trial are not available to the person preventively detained and, therefore, in prevention detention jurisprudence whatever little safeguards the Constitution and the enactments authorizing such detention provide assume utmost importance and must be strictly adhered to”.
The court said that in view of the object of the preventive detention it becomes very imperative on the part of the detaining authority as well as the executing authorities to remain vigilant and “keep their eyes skinned but not to turn a blind eye” in passing the detention order at the earliest from the date of the proposal.
Any unreasonable delay unless satisfactorily explained throws a considerable doubt on the genuineness of the requisite subjective satisfaction of the detaining authority in passing the detention order and consequently render the detention order bad and invalid because the “live and proximate link” between the grounds of detention and the purpose of detention is snapped in arresting the detenu, it added.
The bench said that a question whether the delay is unreasonable and stands unexplained depends on the facts and circumstances of each case.
The bench noted that the proposal to take steps to preventively detain the appellant at the end of the Superintendent of Police addressed to the Superintendent of Police (C/S) West Tripura, Agartala is dated June 28, 2021.
It added that the proposal in turn forwarded by the Assistant Inspector General of Police (Crime) on behalf of the Director General to the Secretary, Home Department is dated July 14, 2021.
The top court said the order of detention is dated November 12, 2021 and there is no explanation worth the name why it took almost five months for the detaining authority to pass the order of preventive detention. (PTI)
