Srinagar: The Supreme Court Friday barred the preventive detention of Masrat Alam Bhat without giving the Muslim League leader a week to take action against any proposed detention.
The Jammu and Kashmir Government which has passed 16 back to back PSA detention orders against Masrat, filed no answer to his habeas corpus despite seeking time to do so. Instead, on the eve of the hearing, they seemed to have seen the wisdom of revoking the 16th detention order on their own. In fact, it appears that the decision to revoke may have been to render the petition in fructuous, and to avoid any adverse order before the Supreme Court.
Masrat Alam’s petition alleged that order after order quoted the same stale grounds which had been quashed by as many as 10 judgments of the High Court, which the Government had defied with impunity. Earlier, the counsel for the Jammu and Kashmir Government asked for time. The Court was considering releasing Masrat Alam, on interim bail, when to everyone’s surprise, the J&K government came out with the information that the detention had in fact been revoked by the State itself. Masrat Alam’s counsel (Nityaa Ramakrishnan) then pointed out that even release orders by the High Court had been followed by such orders ensuring that Bhat had stayed in jail for more than 10 years under preventive detention.
The SC judgment is seen as being a significant rebuke to the J&K government. The detention order, according to Bhat’s lawyers, contain facts contrary to the record. Instances attributed to Bhat as grounds of detention relate to dates and periods when he was in custody. Indeed, even his use of democratic politics is cited as a threat to the nation, besides, the charge that he advised fellow detenues to challenge their detention orders in court!
The counsel for J&K government called him a threat to the nation, to which Bhat’s lawyer responded derisively that it is his party politics that has been quoted as a threat in the oft repeated grounds.
