J&K High Court quashes Public Safety Act detention of AAP MLA Mehraj Malik

The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday quashed the preventive detention of Aam Aadmi Party MLA Mehraj Malik under the Public Safety Act, setting aside the order issued by the Doda district administration in September.

Malik, who represents the Doda constituency and heads the party’s Jammu and Kashmir unit, had been detained for one year on September 8 on charges of disturbing public order.

The Public Safety Act is a preventive detention law that allows persons to be taken into custody to prevent them from acting against “the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order” in the Union Territory. He was the first sitting legislator in the Union Territory to be detained under the law.

On Monday, the court ruled that the grounds cited for Malik’s detention did not meet the legal threshold of “public order” and were largely related to matters of law and order already covered under existing first information reports.

Justice Mohammad Yousuf Wani said that a preventive detention order “cannot be made a substitute for pressing into service the ordinary law of the land so as to relieve and absolve the investigating authority of its functions to investigate crimes”.

He added that there was no sufficient basis to show that Malik “is likely...

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