QAZI YASIR AHMAD Vs. STATE & ORS.

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Challenge in this petition is to order No. 52/DMA/PSA/11 dated 03.05.2011, whereby District Magistrate Anantnag respondent No. 2 herein has ordered preventive detention of Shri Qazi Yasir Ahmad Son of late Qazi Nissar Resident of Qazi Mohalla Anantnag, (detenue for short) under Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act 1978, (herein after the Act) and directed his lodgement in Central Jail Kotbalwal, Jammu. The petitioner seeks quashment of the detention order im pugned in the petition on the following grounds:-

(2.) I have gone through the petition as also the detention record made available by learned Additional Advocate General. I have heard Counsel for the parties.

(3.) Preventive detention as held in A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras, 1950 SCR 88 and reiterated in Rekha v. State of Tamilnadu, 2011 AIR(SCW) 2262 is, by nature repugnant to democratic ideas and an anathema to the rule of law. The Supreme Court in Rekha's case while emphasising that Article 22(3)(b) Constitution of India is to be read an exception to Article 21 of the constitution of India and not allowed to nullify the right to personal liberty guaranteed under the later, observed; "Since however/Article 22 (3) (b) of the Constitution of India permits preventive detention, we cannot hold it illegal, but we must confine, the power of preventive detention to very narrow limits, otherwise we will be taking away the great right to liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of Constitu tion of India, which was won after long ardous, historic struggle. It follows therefore that if law of land (Indian Panel code and other penal statues) can deal with the situation, recourse to the preventive detention law will be illegal".