SATHI ALIAS MUTHUSAMY Vs. SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT OF TAMIL NADU PROHIBITION AND EXCISE DEPARTMENT MADRAS

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner has been ordered to be in prison under a preventive detention order dated 17. 8. 1993 passed by the second respondent and has preferred this writ petition from jail challenging the legal and constitutional validity thereof.

(2.) FROM the grounds of detention supplied to the petitioner and filed along with this petition, it appears that the information was received by police authorities from one Veeramani that the petitioner was selling I. D. arrack containing poisonous substance. The said report was recorded on 3. 8. 1993 and consequent thereupon, the police party visited the place and found the petitioner pouring I. D. arrack on a glass tumbler to an unknown person. On seeing the police party, he threw away the glass tumbler and ran away. The party, however, surrounded the petitioner and arrested him with a 10 litre can containing about 8 litres of arrack and cash of Rs. 15. Two samples of the said arrack were prepared and property sealed. One of them was later sent for chemical examination which revealed that the arrack contained atropine equivalent to 3. 2. mg. per cent in it. The opinion was taken from the assistant Professor, Forensic Medicine, Madura i Medica l Colleg e , Madurai , about the condition of Veeramani and the effect of Atropine contained in the arrack. The material was allegedly placed before the second respondent, who recorded his satisfaction that the petitioner was a'bootlegger'within the meaning of Act 14 of 1982 and his activities were causing widespread danger to public health. That is how the petitioner was ordered to be detained.