J-K: HC dismisses plea challenging detention of Mian Qayoom under PSA

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Friday dismissed a petition challenging the detention under the Public Safety Act (PSA) of Kashmir Bar Association president Mian Abdul Qayoom and held that preventive detention was not a punitive measure.

Justice Tashi Rabstan, while dismissing the petition, said it was sans merit.

"A law of preventive detention is not invalid because it prescribed no objective standard for ordering preventive detention and leaves the matter to subjective satisfaction of the executive," the court observed.

It held that the preventive detention is not punitive but preventive and is resorted to with a view to prevent a person from committing activities prejudicial to certain objects that the law of preventive detention seeks to prescribe.

The court said the subjective satisfaction of a detaining authority to detain a person or not is not open to objective assessment by a court.

"A court is not a proper forum to scrutinise the merits of administrative decision to detain a person. The court cannot substitute its own satisfaction for that of the authority concerned and decide whether its satisfaction was reasonable or proper, or whether in the circumstances of the matter, the person concerned should have been detained or not. It is often said and held that the courts do not even go into the question whether the facts mentioned in grounds of detention are correct or false," the judge observed.

Qayoom was detained in August 5 last year after the Centre announced abrogation of Article 370.

The Kashmir Bar Association president was shifted to a jail in Agra where his health condition deteriorated. He was shifted to Delhi's Tihar Jail last week.