BABULAL DAS Vs. STATE OF WEST BENGAL

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A single act of outrageous violence in a running train on February 16, 1973 by an armed gang, of which the petitioner was alleged to be a member, persuaded the District Magistrate of Nadia to direct his detention under sub-section 1 (a) (ii) of S. 3 of the Maintenance of Internal Security 1971 (Act XXVI of 1971) (hereinafter called the MISA, for short). The subsequent statutory requirements have been fulfilled impeccably and the only major submission of the petitioner is that, on merits, he is not guilty, that a case charge-sheeted against him has ended in a discharge and that a single incident is insufficient to constitute 'a stream of tendency' warranting preventive detention. Most of the submissions urged have no force. The fact that the petitioner was discharged by a court for the same crime does not bear on the power to detain, nor are we impressed with the other arguments urged before us. Learned counsel Sri Malviya, appearing amicus curiae, strenuously contended that one swallow does not make a summer and likewise a solitary incident cannot imperil maintenance of internal security and so the over is bad. He relied on certain rulings of this Court and, rightly so.

(2.) This Court has been vigilant to see that isolated offenses are not exploited by executive authorities for clamping down preventive detention insouciantly to by-pass the normal judicial processes. But there is one exceptional category of cases where an only dangerous deviance may itself demonstrate its potentiality for continuing criminality and indicate previous practice, experiment and expertise. In such a narrow category of cases it is difficult to predicate abuse of power or absence of application of mind by the authority if preventive detention is directed solely on one specialised crime.

(3.) In the present case, the act imputed to the detenu is set out in the detention order thus: