‘Extraordinary measure rendered ordinary’: Madhya Pradesh High Court slams ‘reckless’ NSA use

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh High Court has criticised the “reckless invocation” of the National Security Act (NSA), while quashing the preventive detention of two brothers under the law and warning that an extraordinary constitutional measure was being treated as an ordinary course of proceedings.A division bench headed by Justice Vivek Agarwal ordered the release of Rajendra Thakur and Rajesh Thakur, ruling that authorities failed to establish the requisite grounds for preventive detention and appeared to have acted without applying their minds. The Jabalpur district collector had ordered their detention on Jan 6 for three months over an alleged threat to public order, later extending the period.“Preventive detention, conceived as an extraordinary measure by the framers of our Constitution, has been rendered ordinary with its reckless invocation over the years as if it were available for use even in the ordinary course of proceedings,” HC said.The order, delivered on Sept 11, was made public on Oct 5.The court found that the brothers, named in 14 cases, had been acquitted in 11 when NSA was invoked against them. “This leads to a conclusion that correct facts were not placed before the competent authority, and that clearly suffers from the vice of non-application of mind,” the bench said.It added that authorities could have verified their criminal records with minimal effort through the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems. The three pending cases against the duo pertained to obscene act, causing hurt and wrongful confinement, and throwing a crude bomb to create unrest.The bench was also alarmed that the proposal by the city SP to invoke NSA and the collector’s detention order passed through four officials and were completed on the same day.“Turning our attention to section 3(1) of the NSA, the govt has to arrive at a subjective satisfaction that a goonda (as in the present case) has to be detained, in order to prevent him from acting in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order. The application of mind to invoke the aforesaid extraordinary measure appears to be missing in the present case,” the HC said.“There is no requisite satisfaction recorded by the detaining authority that the detenus are a threat to public order. It also appears that the haste with which the matter was processed in a single day took away independent exercise of mind by the detaining authority,” it added.Citing the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Ameena Begum vs State of Telangana, the bench stressed that constitutional safeguards must be enforced to prevent arbitrary detention.“To unchain the shackles of preventive detention, it is important that safeguards enshrined in our Constitution, particularly under the ‘golden triangle’ formed by Articles 14, 19 and 21, are diligently enforced,” the court said.The ruling comes amid similar judicial criticism of NSA detentions in Uttar Pradesh. Last month, Allahabad HC ordered the release of Delhi University graduate Aakriti Choudhary, detained in connection with a workers’ protest in April, and imposed a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Noida DM and other officials.In its Sept 2 order, Allahabad HC rebuked UP’s administrative machinery for invoking NSA without applying its mind or relying on credible evidence. It stressed that preventive detention was an exception, not a substitute for ordinary criminal law.Reminding police and administrative officials that their allegiance was to the Constitution, not the political executive, Allahabad HC warned that an errant bureaucracy could reduce UP to an Orwellian dystopia.You Can Also Check: Gold Rate in Bhopal | Silver Rate in Bhopal | Bank Holidays in Bhopal | Public Holidays in Bhopal | Petrol Price in Bhopal | Diesel Price in Bhopal | CNG Price in Bhopal | LPG Price in BhopalStay updated with the latest Bhopal news. Download the TOI App.