Recalls Martin Luther King Quote: ‘Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere’
By M Ahmad
Srinagar- Recalling words of American civil rights activist and Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King Jr that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” the High Court of J&K and Ladakh on Wednesday quashed a detention order under Public Safety Act against a 43-year-old man from Baramulla.
“This is a writ petition for seeking quashment of preventive detention order which has resulted in subjecting the petitioner to suffer second time in succession loss of his personal liberty as a citizen of India to whom otherwise the right to life and personal liberty is guaranteed as a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India,” a bench of Justice Rahul Bhart observed while ultimately quashing the detention order under PSA against the Baramulla resident, Manzoor Ahmad Lone alias Munaa.
A father of six minor daughters, Lone had been earlier booked under PSA also and the same was quashed by the court on 16 November 2021, the bench observed.
For the purpose of securing his “lost fundamental right”, the court said, Lone through this father, has made present petition a bearer of his “SOS call to restore his snatched personal liberty by invoking habeas corpus writ jurisdiction of this Court.”
“Nothing can be more pricking to the sensitivity and spirit of the fundamental right to life and personal liberty coded in Article 21 of the Constitution of India than the mechanical mindset exhibited in the present case on the part of the District Police Baramulla, the District Magistrate Baramulla and last on the part of the Govt. of UT of J&K in using the public detention jurisdiction more on a pleasure mode than on the principle mode,” the court said, adding, “An unwarranted and misconceived preventive detention order issued by the Govt., or its authorized officials leave the person (detenue) and the populace at same page going by the words of Martin Luther King “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
In the second detention order and in the first one, the court said, there is a common factor which is FIR no. 51/2020 “but to the utter amazement of the Court, the District Police Baramulla acted as if unaware, deliberately or incidentally, about the fact that with similar FIR reference the previous detention order no.14-DMK/PSA of 2020 dated 30.12.2020, which had made the petitioner to suffer loss of personal liberty for an almost one year, had come to be quashed by this High Court in its judgement dated 16.11.2021.”
“This Court is at loss to figure out how even the Govt. afforded itself to act as a rubber stamp to lend approval vide its Order no. Home/PB-V/1819 of 2022 dated 08.08.2022 to the action on the part of the District Police Baramulla and the decision on the part of the District Magistrate Baramulla in dishing out a detention order in a manner so casual that even a routine issuance of a summon by a judicial authority asking a person to appear before it is issued with a more informed application of mind,” the court said and quashed the detention order (No. 52/DMB/PSA/2022) dated 25 June 2022.
“The petitioner is directed to be released by the concerned Incharge of the Jail in which the petitioner is lodged,” the court added.
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