Ex-sports ministry officer denied fair trial, High Court hears
KUALA LUMPUR: Former Youth and Sports Ministry finance division secretary Otman Arsahd was denied a fair trial due to serious misdirection by the Sessions Court in evaluating prosecution evidence, the High Court heard.
The Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has ruled that preventive detention cannot replace ordinary criminal law, quashing a Public Safety Act (PSA) order against a Srinagar resident. Justice M A Chowdhary emphasized that preventive detention should not be used merely due to general apprehension about a person's background, and there must be concrete evidence to predict future harmful behavior.
The PSA, which was invoked against Zubair Altaf Sheikh in September 2022, was based on an FIR registered in 2022 and a fresh dossier with new information. However, the court found that the detention order lacked a direct connection to Sheikh's current threat to the state's security. The detention was previously quashed in April 2024, and the court noted that the detaining authority could not simply revive the earlier order without demonstrating how new evidence justified the continued detention.
The court cited several Supreme Court judgments, asserting that the grounds of detention must be specific and relevant to the present threat to the state, and that a mere label or unchallenged employment claim is insufficient to support preventive detention.
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