Staff Reporter
He had murdered a Muslim woman in Melapalayam
“There are no cogent materials to prove the possibility of the accused coming out on bail”
MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, on Friday, quashed the detention order under the National Security Act passed against K. Shahul Hameed, a suspected Al-Umma sympathiser of Melapalayam in Tirunelveli district.
The detainee was accused of stabbing to death a Muslim woman in public view on March 9.]
The accused felt that the woman’s illegal intimacy with another person was against the principles of Islam. In his detention order dated March 20, 2007, the Commissioner of Police had said:
“This cold-blooded murder incident had created a terror among the Muslim women of Melapalayam and thereby disturbed normal life of the general public.”
However, a Division Bench comprising Justice Prafulla Kumar Misra and Justice R. Balasubramanian said that the preventive detention order was not sustainable as there were no cogent materials to prove that that there was an imminent possibility of the accused coming out on bail in such a gruesome murder case.
An exception
Stating that the court would not normally interfere in the subjective satisfaction of the detaining authority, the Judges said that the present case was an exception because the detention order had been passed within 11 days from the arrest of the accused.
The Bench also accepted the submission made by petitioner’s counsel, C. Ramesh, that there was no sufficient material to prove that the State Government had intimated the detention to the Central Government within seven days as required under the Act.
