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Synopsis

While dealing with two habeas corpus petitions, the Madras High Court recently observed that the gross abuse of preventive detention laws in the State of Tamil Nadu has reached Orwellian proportions.

The bench of Justice MS Ramesh and Justice N Anand Venkatesh pointed out that Tamil Nadu has been topping the list of states detaining the maximum number of people under its preventive laws in the entire country for a decade now.

Referring to the statistics provided on the website of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the Prison Statistics India Report, the court observed that in 2021, Tamil Nadu reported 1,775 detenues which accounted for 51.2 percent of the total preventive detention cases across the country.

"The numbers appear to only rise with each passing year. The inferences drawn can be twofold : either the State is inching towards lawlessness or that the jurisdiction of suspicion has now become a convenient and potent weapon in the hands of the law enforcing agencies to indiscriminately detain people by a conscious abuse of its statutory powers," the court said.

Therefore, playing its role "as a sentinel on the qui vive guarding the citizen from the excesses of the executive", court warned the State government that it would impose costs on it for every case of wrongful detention that it comes across.

Court held that while quashing preventive detention orders, if the Court finds that the detention was wholly frivolous or was based on non-existent or irrelevant grounds, the State would be mulcted with punitive damages.

Further, court referred to the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug Offenders, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Sand Offenders, Slum Grabbers and Video Pirates Act, 1982 (Act) and said that given the vast array of powers under the Act, it has become the favourite hunting ground for the police to deal with common criminals and other undesirables.

In other words, preventive detention has become an instrument of convenience whereby such elements are dealt with on the sure knowledge that once a detention order is passed, such persons are bound to be jailed for at least 3-6 months, pending reference to the Advisory Board or a challenge before this Court by way of a petition for habeas corpus, the court observed. 

In the present habeas corpus petitions, detention orders passed by district authorities were challenged. One of the detenues had been booked under the Goondas Act for protesting against land acquisition by the State, and the other had slapped a police constable.

Court found that none of the incidents had the potential to cause disturbance to the public order. Therefore, Court set aside the detention orders and directed that both detenues be released from prison.

Case Title: Sunitha v. Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Home and another connected matter