Holding that procedural safeguards for protection of personal liberty must be strictly followed, the Supreme Court has quashed the preventive detention of four persons under the Conservation of Foreign Exchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act.
A Bench of Justices A.K. Ganguly and J.S. Khehar, quoting a catena of decisions, held that in preventive detention cases, representations from the detenus must be disposed of expeditiously and every day's delay must be properly explained and accounted for.
Safeguards
Writing the judgment, Justice Ganguly said: “The history of personal liberty, as is well known, is a history of insistence on procedural safeguards.”
He said: “The Constitution Bench in a judgment has laid emphasis on the expression ‘as soon as may be' in Article 22 (5) and held that the expression sufficiently makes it clear the concern of the framers of the Constitution that the representation should be very expeditiously considered and disposed of with a sense of urgency and without any avoidable delay.”
The Bench said: “Considering this provision, the Constitution Bench held that there should not be any supine indifference, slackness or callous attitude in considering the representation. Any unexplained delay in the disposal of representation would be a breach of the constitutional imperative and it would render the continued detention impermissible and illegal.”
In the instant case, Ummu Sabeena, Saliyal Beevi, Salukal Beevi and M. Parimala were detained under the COFEPOSA on February 26 and their writ petitions questioning the detention were rejected by the Kerala High Court on September 30. The present appeals are directed against this judgment.
The main contention of the appellants, according to counsel K.K. Mani, was that they made representations to the Centre on March 30 to reconsider the preventive detention order and though they were rejected on April 8 by the Kerala government, the Centre took time till June 6 to reject the same. This delay was not properly explained, counsel argued.
Accepting the contentions, the Bench said: “It is clear the Central government took about two months, the whole of April and May, and ultimately rejected the representations only on June 6. We find that delay in these cases is for a much longer period and there is hardly any explanation. We, therefore, have no hesitation in quashing the orders of detention on the ground of delay on the part of the Central government. The detenus should be set at liberty forthwith unless they are required to be detained in connection with any other case.”
