SRINAGAR, June 4: Jammu and Kashmir High Court has quashed the detention of four people, including senior separtist leader Masarat Alam, detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA) for their alleged role in 2010 unrest in the valley.
Justice Hasnain Masoodi directed the government to release all the detenues if they were not involved in any other offence.
The order was given on Saturday after the court heard arguments from both sides on separate petitions filed by the detenues, challenging their detention under the PSA.
Alam, considered a confidant of separatist hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani, was alleged to have provoked people to take to the streets and observe strikes in 2010, when more than 120 people, mostly youths, were killed in alleged firing by security forces.
The Public Safety Act allows detention without trial for a period of six months.
However, the state government had slapped another detention order under the PSA against Alam in January this year after his earlier detention was quashed by the court.
The petitioner through his counsel, Mian Abdul Qayoom, had challenged his detention on several grounds, including the one that the latest detention order had the same grounds under which Alam was booked earlier which was quashed by the court.
“It is a well-settled law that after a detention order is quashed against a detainee, he cannot be detained again on the same grounds on which he was booked earlier,” Qayoom told the court.
He pleaded before the court that the detention order passed against Alam in January 2012 was illegal, improper and unconstitutional and required to be quashed.
The court also quashed the detention orders of Ameer-e-Hamza, Nazir Ahmad Ganie and Waqar Ahmad Morkah.
