The Supreme Court, in an important verdict on the government’s power of preventive detention, has ruled that such orders can be issued by the law enforcing agencies against a habitual offender or criminal even if he is held in jail.
The top court clarified that such powers were granted to the law enforcing authorities in the cases where they had reasons to believe that there was a “real possibility” of the detained person getting bail from the court of law and his release will be detrimental to the public order.
“There is no prohibition in law to pass the detention order in respect of a person who is already in custody in respect of a criminal case,” a bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and Dipak Misra ruled.
However, it referred to three specific conditions to be met before any competent law enforcing authority issues the preventive detention order.
The three conditions listed include:
The authority was fully aware that the person was actually in custody, there was reliable material available before the authority on the basis of which there was reasons to believe that there was “real possibility” of the release of such prisoner on bail and if released he could indulge in activities prejudicial to the public order. And in the opinion of the authority it is necessary to prevent the person from gaining freedom to curtail his activities and his continued detention was necessary for maintaining the law and order.
The top court defined the law while deciding the case of H.S. Singh from Manipur against whom preventive dentition order was issued by Imphal district magistrate on June 30, 2011, under the National Security Act.
After the Guwahati high court rejected the petition of H.S. Singh’s father H.K. Singh, he had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court.
After defining the law on preventive detention of a person already in custody, the top court, however, quashed the order for the detention of H.S. Singh as it found that his case did not meet the three basic requirements.
In fact the order for his preventive detention was issued by the district magistrate on mere apprehension because some other similarly placed person was granted bail.