Recourse to PSA unconstitutional if penal code provisions sufficient: J&K HC in drug peddling case

Srinagar, April 09: The Jammu & Kashmir High Court has questioned the slapping of the Public Safety Act against a drug peddler when penal code provisions were sufficient.

Justice Rajesh Sekhari, while quashing the detention order of Adil Hussain Mir in a drug peddling case, observed that “it is held that a person involved in a solitary criminal activity cannot be put under preventive detention, if ordinary law of the land is competent and sufficient to deal with such activity.”

The High Court held that a detaining authority is under a legal obligation and constitutional mandate to “provide in clear terms, complete particulars of all the criminal activities attributed to the detenu and if, relevant provisions of the penal code are sufficient to deal with the activity attributed to a criminal, recourse to PSA or preventive detention laws shall not only be illegal but unconstitutional.”

The petitioner argued before the High Court that the allegations attributed to him in the grounds of “detention may be a law and order problem but do not qualify within the definition of public order under section 8 of the J&K Public Safety Act 1978 and that the grounds of detention are vague in nature, because there is no specific allegation regarding involvement of the petitioner in the unlawful activities attributed to him.”

According to the police case, the detenu was a notorious drug peddler and a principal dealer of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances in his area and was exposing the youth, “including the school-going children into the world of drugs in furtherance of criminal intention to make them habitual addicts."

It was also alleged that the detenue was an active member of a larger drug mafia operating not only in the local area of his residence but also in the surrounding areas of his district of Anantnag due to which he was apprehended in case FIR no 133/2022, under Section 8/21-22 NDPS Act of police station Bijbehara.