Preventive detention is a serious invasion of personal liberty, the Supreme Court said on Friday, as it noted that constitutional safeguards in such matters are non-negotiable. It highlighted that a detention order becomes bad in law if all relevant facts about the person proposed to be detained are either concealed or not placed by police before appropriate authorities. “Any indifferent attitude on the part of the detaining authority or executing authority would defeat the very purpose of the preventive action and turn the detention order as a dead letter and frustrate the entire proceedings,” it held. The court added that an unexplained delay between passing the order of detention and date of the proposal would snap the “live & proximate link” between the grounds of detention and its purpose. The state never thought to even challenge the bail orders passed by the special court releasing the appellant on bail,” said the bench, quashing the detention order against Sushanta Kumar Banik.

Source: Hindustan Times October 01, 2022 04:42 UTC