The Central Government on Wednesday agreed to release the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association President Mian Abdul Qayoom who is presently under detention in Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, appearing for J&K Government, made the submission to this effect before a three-judge bench consisting of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Ajay Rastogi, and Aniruddha Bose.
Accepting the submission, the bench ordered to release Mian Abdul Qayoom tomorrow. The court also directed that his family would be allowed to receive him from Tihar Jail. As submitted by senior advocate Dushyant Dave, on behalf of the petitioner- Qayoom, he will not travel to Jammu & Kashmir till August 7 and not issue any press or other statements till that date.
The court also noted that Qayoom’s premature release would facilitate him in celebrating Eid which is on July 31.
The court while passing the order noted that it had not analysed the merits of the J&K High Court judgment upholding the detention of Qayoom.
Qayoom had approached the apex court challenging the decision of the J&K High Court upholding his detention under the PSA. The J&K Government, however, informed the Court that the detention of Qayoom would not be extended beyond August 7 by which date his detention is to expire naturally.
Appearing for Qayoom, senior advocate Dushyant Dave and Advocate Vrinda Grover had argued that the petitioner should be released forthwith as every day of illegal detention is an unconstitutional curtailment of the petitioner’s liberty.
The bench had, therefore, directed the Solicitor General to get the instruction from the J&K Government whether it was willing to release Qayoom immediately on conditional bail.
It also recorded its happiness at the constructive approach adopted by the Government and the persuasive skills used by the SG Tushar Mehta to persuade the Government to accept the suggestion both of senior advocate Dushyant Dave and the Court.
Before parting with the matter, the bench headed by Justice Kaul said “Kashmir has been a troubled area. Nature has been very kind to the place. It is the human race which has been unkind. It is time for all wounds to be healed and look to the future within the domain of our country”.
The bench added “We are sure that the petitioner will also adopt a more constructive approach to the future and the Government will consider how to bring complete normalcy at the earliest. Hope is something which creates the future and we are hopeful”.
In his plea in the apex court, Qayoom had stated that the judgment dated May 28 by the J&K HC was ex-facie unsustainable in law as it was premised on stale, irrelevant, remote, vague, imprecise and deficient grounds of detention.
The HC order, according to the petitioner, concluded that most of the grounds in the detention order “are somewhat clumsy” which implied that the High Court too found them wanting.
“In Paras 23 and 28 of the impugned judgment, the High Court makes it abundantly clear that the detention order has been upheld solely on one ground – the four FIRs dating back to 2008 and 2010, as enumerated in the detention order. These FIRs are stale, irrelevant and have no proximate, pertinent or live link to the present, and are thus superfluous and extraneous to the satisfaction required in law qua the tendency or propensity to act in a manner prejudicial to public order. Pertinently, even in the said decade old 4 FIRs, the Petitioner was neither arrested, nor any chargesheet ever filed by the police against the Petitioner”, the petitioner asserted in the SC.
According to the plea, the petitioner had already been detained in 2010 on the basis of the said FIRs under the PSA, and the said detention was subsequently revoked. Thus, the same FIRs cannot be used to pass another order of detention under the PSA.
Senior Advocate Dushyant Dave and Advocate Vrinda Grover, assisted by Advocates Soutik Banerjee, Ratna Appnender, and Advocate-on-Record Aakarsh Kamra, represented the petitioner before the Supreme Court.
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