Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has quashed the detention order of freelance journalist and television debater Majid Hyderi, jailed for 17 months under the Public Safety Act.
The court warned that the country would lose “peace and peace-loving citizens” if people like Hyderi were treated like this.
Hyderi was arrested in September 2023 after exposing alleged corruption involving some influential persons. The Jammu and Kashmir administration and police, however, claimed Hyderi disseminated false information in the guise of journalism and promoted secessionism.
Hyderi faced charges of criminal conspiracy, extortion, spreading false information and defamation following a complaint by a local journalist and was lodged in Jammu’s Kot Bhalwal jail.
“It is very unfortunate that the respondents, in the reply affidavit, have labelled the detainee as ‘not a peaceful citizen of India’,” Justice Vinod Chatterji Koul said in a judgment on Wednesday.
“If we treat detainees like him in such a harsh way by bashing and thrashing them and placing them under preventive detention, then we will lose peace and peace-loving citizens. Instead of appreciating the detainee, he has been placed under preventive detention,” Justice Koul added.
The court also regretted that Hyderi’s mother was “forced to see him in preventive detention for none of
his faults”.
The judge said Hyderi had written against separatists and militants and his mother — a broadcaster for a government radio station — supported India during the early 1990s amid threats by militants.
The court said that the detaining authority had referred to Hyderi’s 2018 social media comments to build a case against him but failed to establish the “live and proximate link” that would justify detention. Justice Koul said the generalised grounds in the detention order “smack
of arbitrariness”.
The court also referred to a 2024 judgment of a division bench of the high court, which held that criticism of the Jammu and Kashmir government’s policies “cannot be said to be a ground to be relied upon for placing a person under preventive detention”.
Justice Koul emphasised that preventive detention was an exceptional measure and should not replace the general law of arrest and detention.
