TALIB KHAN Vs. STATE OF RAJASTHAN

JUDGEMENT

(1.) This order will decide 13 Habeas Corpus Petitions Numbers 831, 909, 919, 920, 921, 922, 923, 924, 925, 966, 1030, 1037 and 1177 of 1987 filed respectively by Talib Khan, Gazi Khan, Gulsher, Meette Khan, Haleem Khan, Sawan Khan, Kande Khan, Achar Khan, Allahrakhia, Jumme Khan, Rahim, Lakhe Khan and Govind Lal in this Court against their detention under 13 separate detention orders, all passed by the District Magistrate, Jaisalmer, on Jan. 7,1987 under S. 3(2) of the National Security Act, 1980 (for short, hereinafter, 'the Act'), in the Central Jail, Jodhpur, as common questions of law and facts are involved in them.

(2.) In all these 13 Habeas Corpus petitions, the arguments advanced by the learned counsel for the respective petitioners revolved around following points :-

(3.) In all these cases, respondent No. 2 has filed his counter-affidavits in reply to the petitions. Respondent 2 in his counter-affidavit, has admitted that the detenus were detained on January, 7,1987 and the grounds of detention were not served on them within 5 days of making the order but were served on 10th day i.e. Jan. 16, 1987. He has sworn that there was heavy volume of work as papers concerning 35 detenus were to be photostated. The photostat machine at Jaisalmer was hand operated and the dealer was not in a position to give the photostat copies in time. Consequently, the papers were taken to Jodhpur for getting the photostat copies. At Jodhpur also, owing to power failure and heavy volume of work, it took a lot of time to get the papers photostated. He has denied that the grounds, communicated to the detenus for their detention were vague, non-existent, irrelevant or remote. It is stated that grounds of detention and copies of the documents served on the detenus go to show that respondent No. 2 passed the order of detention on the (basis of adequate material available before him after due application of mind. The confidential reports submitted by various intelligence agencies were withheld under sub-sec. (2) of S. 8 of the Act. According to respondent 2, the detenus cannot question his right to claim privilege under sub-sec. (2) of S. 8 of the Act and the sufficiency of the grounds on which the privilege has been claimed. He passed the detention orders after considering the documents placed before him and drew reasonable inferences that the activities of the detenus were, prejudicial to the interest of the security of the State and public order. According to respondent 2, the detenus knew Hindi. They never made a request to him that they neither knew Hindi nor English and as such, there was no question of supplying the grounds of detention to the detenus in local or Rajasthan language.