The High Court of Karnataka has issued a series of guidelines to be strictly followed in the future by State authorities while passing orders to place a person under preventive detention as per the provisions of the Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders and Slum Grabbers Act, 1985 (commonly known as Goonda Act).
A Division Bench comprising Justice K.N. Phaneendra and Justice K Natarajan issued the guidelines after noting that all detenus may not be able to understand detention orders, some of which are complicated in nature and would be difficult to comprehend even for a person well-versed in legal aspects.
The Bench delivered the verdict while quashing the detention of Ravikumar alias Kumara alias Tanga by the Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru, in August 2018. The court found that neither the government nor the detaining authority had considered his representation against the detention order.
The court directed that the detention order, in writing, should be communicated to the detenu soon after it is passed, and that the detaining authority should also communicate the grounds for detention, comprising the basic facts and relied-upon material in their entirety with documents, statements and other material, no later than five days from the date of passing of detention order.
Grounds for detention
If two or more grounds are relief upon by the authority, each one should be separately mentioned in the detention order, the Bench said, pointing out that “it would be very difficult even to a person who is well-versed in legal aspects to specifically and in a candid manner distinguish between the documents “relied upon” and “referred thereto”, in the absence of the authorities specifically not stating which are which in the detention order.
While directing that every detention order should be supplied with a translated legible version of all the scripts and documents relied upon, in a language the detenu understands, the court pointed out that the detaining authority has to understand that the details are to be intelligible and understandable to the detenu. This obligation should not be a mere formality as the Act does not provide any assistance by a legal person to the detenu to read and understand the detention order for making a representation against it, the court said.
The guidelines
* The detenu has to be supplied with copies of materials relied upon for detention within five days of the passing of detention order
* The detention order and documents should be supplied with a translated legible version in the language the detenu understands
* The detaining authority has to specifically disclose the documents “relied upon” and “referred to”
* Courts shall independently examine each ground in the detention order
* Representation of the detenu against detention order has to be considered, whomsoever it is addressed to
* The detention order has to be submitted before the Advisory Board within three weeks of the date of detention order
* The Advisory Board shall maintain records disclosing the date of receipt of detention order and materials, and representation of the detenu
* The government should consider, at least once at any stage, the representation of the detenu before confirming the detention order
* The detaining authority has no discretion to detain a person for any reason if the Advisory Board disapproves detention
* The detaining authority cannot pass any extended or further detention order on the same grounds
* Fresh detention can be made on a separate order on fresh grounds, not on the grounds of the earlier order
