Sandeep Singh vs State Of J&K; And Others on 21 July, 2017
"I have thoroughly by examined the dossier submitted by the
Superintendent of Police, Anantnag, to District Magistrate,
Anantnagas also the grounds of detention formulated by the
latter for the detention of the detenue in the present case, and I
find the said grounds of detention are nothing but the verbatim
reproduction of the dossier as forwarded by the Police to the
detaining authority. He has only changed the number of
paragraphs, trying in vain to give it a different shape. This is in
fact a case of non-application of mind on the detaining authority.
Without applying his own mind to the facts of the case. He has
acted as an agent of the police. It was his legal duty to find out if
the allegations levelled by the police against the detenue in the
dossier were really going to effect the maintenance of public
order, as a result of the activities, allegedly, committed by him.
He had also to find out whether such activities were going to
affect the public order is future also as a result of which it was
necessary to detain the detenue, so as to prevent him from doing
so. After all, the preventive detention envisaged under the Act is
in fact only to prevent a person from acting in any manner which
may be prejudicial to the maintenance of public order, and not to
punish him for his past penal acts. The learned District
Magistrate appears to have passed the impugned order in a
routine manner being in different to the import of preventive
detention as or detained in the Act, Passing of an order without
application of mind goes to the root of its validity, and in that
case, the question of going into the genuineness or otherwise of
the grounds does not arise. Having found that the detaining
authority has not applied his mind to the facts of the case while
passing the impugned order, it is not necessary to go to the merits
of the grounds of detention, as mandated by Section 10-A of the
Act."