Detention untenable: Supreme Court frees Madhya Pradesh student charged under NSA
The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of a law student from Madhya Pradesh who had been taken into preventive detention under the National Security Act (NSA), 1980. The court termed the detention 'wholly untenable' and directed his immediate release from Bhopal Central Jail, provided he is not required in any other criminal case.The law student had been detained by an order on July 11, 2024, issued by the District Magistrate of Betul. The detention order was extended four times, with the latest extension valid until July 12, 2025. The authorities cited nine criminal antecedents, including the present case, to justify the detention under Section 3(2) of the NSA.advertisementHowever, the appellant's counsel informed the court that the student had been acquitted in five out of the eight earlier cases, convicted in one where the punishment was limited to a fine and was currently out on bail in the remaining two pending cases.
The apex court took note of multiple lapses in the detention process. It said, 'Looking into the facts and circumstances of the case, the court directed the appellant, who is presently lodged in the Central Jail at Bhopal, to be released forthwith from custody, if he is not required in any other criminal case.'The bench observed that the reasons for the detention did not fulfil the criteria under Sub-Section (2) of Section 3 of the NSA. 'Preventive detention of the appellant, therefore, becomes wholly untenable,' the court said.advertisementIt further noted procedural lapses, including the District Collector's failure to forward the student's representation to the State Government. Additionally, the court pointed out that the authorities had failed to justify why preventive detention was necessary when the appellant was already under custody in connection with a regular criminal proceeding.The student was granted bail in the ongoing criminal case on January 28, 2025. The court remarked that he remained in custody solely due to the preventive detention order.The Supreme Court concluded that it would issue a detailed and reasoned order in due course.- EndsMust Watch
IN THIS STORY#Supreme Court
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
41 minutes ago
- Mint
Trump Runs Up Supreme Court Winning Streak, Amassing More Power
The US Supreme Court's just-completed term had a clear winner: President Donald Trump. With a 6-3 ruling Friday restricting the power of judges to issue nationwide blocks on presidential initiatives, the court put an exclamation mark on a term dominated by Trump victories. The court's conservative supermajority sided with Trump on both broad legal questions and an unprecedented barrage of emergency requests to let his policies take effect right away. The end result was a stack of decisions deferring to Trump. The court let him discharge transgender people from the military, fire top officials at government agencies and open hundreds of thousands of migrants to deportation. The Supreme Court repeatedly reinstated Trump policies found by lower courts to be illegal, and it undercut judges who said the administration had violated their orders. At times, the court gave little if any explanation for its actions, even as liberal justices blasted the majority for rewarding what they said was Trump's lawlessness. 'The court treated him as if he were a normal president, and I think that was probably a mistake,' said Kermit Roosevelt, a professor who teaches constitutional law at the University of Pennsylvania. The court has yet to grapple with 'what to do with the president who does not seem to be motivated by public spiritedness or the good of the country and doesn't necessarily subscribe to American values like due process and liberty and equality.' The ruling Friday gives the administration a new tool to try to stop judges from putting policies on hold. Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett faulted three trial judges for issuing so-called nationwide injunctions halting Trump's plan to restrict automatic birthright citizenship. 'Federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch,' said Barrett, one of three Trump appointees on the court. Trump, who thanked by name the six Republican-appointed justices in the majority, declared the decision a 'monumental victory.' He said the administration would move to lift holds judges have placed on a number of his policies, mentioning fights over refugee resettlement, federal spending and so-called sanctuary cities. 'The Supreme Court has finally put a stop to this judicial activism, which has abused our constitutional separation of powers for too long,' Alabama's Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall said in an emailed statement. The decision was one of five rulings the court released Friday as it issued the term's last opinions in argued cases. Among other decisions was one that backed Trump's position by declaring that parents have the right to opt their children out of public-school lessons for religious reasons. Earlier in the month, the court agreed with Trump in another culture-war clash, upholding state bans on certain medical treatments for transgender children. The court on Monday and Thursday will likely indicate new cases the justices will hear in their next nine-month term, which will start in October. Trump suffered a rare setback in May when the court blocked the administration from using a rarely used wartime law to send about 176 Venezuelans to a Salvadoran prison before they had a chance to make their case to a judge. 'This ruling was particularly significant because it showed the court's willingness to enforce constitutional constraints even on immigration enforcement — typically an area where the court defers strongly to executive authority,' said Stephanie Barclay, a professor who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown Law School. But the following month, the court appeared to undercut the decision when it let the administration resume quickly deporting migrants to countries other than their own. The court gave no explanation for the decision, which lifted a judge's order that gave people 10 days notice and a chance to argue they would be at risk of torture. The birthright citizenship case didn't directly concern the legality of the restrictions, which would upend a longstanding constitutional right. Trump seeks to jettison what has been the widespread understanding that the Constitution's 14th Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone born on US soil. The executive order would restrict that to babies with at least one parent who is a citizen or legal permanent resident. The practical effect of the ruling remains to be seen. The 22 states challenging the citizenship plan can still argue at the lower court level that they need a nationwide halt to avoid the financial costs and administrative headaches that would result if the restrictions applied in neighboring jurisdictions. And Barrett explicitly left open the prospect that people challenging policies can press class action lawsuits. A prominent critic of nationwide injunctions, Notre Dame law professor Samuel Bray, hailed the decision — but also predicted a surge of class action suits and new court orders blocking the citizenship policy. 'I do not expect the president's executive order on birthright citizenship will ever go into effect,' Bray said in a statement. Barrett cast the ruling as a nonpartisan one, noting that the Biden administration also sought to rein in the use of nationwide injunctions. 'It's easy to see why. By the end of the Biden administration, we had reached 'a state of affairs where almost every major presidential act was immediately frozen by a federal district court,' Barrett wrote, quoting from a law review article co-written by Bray and University of Chicago Law School professor William Baude. Critics of the court said that characterization missed a key point. 'It is true, of course, that universal injunctions have bedeviled both prior Democratic and Republican administrations,' Michael Dorf, a professor who teaches constitutional law and federal courts at Cornell Law School, said in an email. 'But the court fails to recognize the fact that eliminating a tool for courts to rein in the executive branch is especially perilous at this particular moment, when we have an administration that is already inclined to take a casual attitude towards judicial orders.' This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
'Against Ambedkar's ideology': CJI Gavai on Article 370; says need 'one Constitution to keep country united'
NEW DELHI: The Chief Justice of India BR Gavai on Saturday supported the abrogation of Article 370 and said that in order to keep the country united, "we need only one Constitution". Tired of too many ads? go ad free now He recalled when the case was brought before the Supreme Court, the five-judge bench unanimously upheld the Centre's decision to abrogate Article 370 citing it against BR Ambedkar's ideology. "When Article 370 was challenged, it came before us, and when the hearing was underway, I recalled Dr Babasaheb's words that one Constitution is suited for a country... If we want to keep the country united, we need only one Constitution," PTI quoted Gavai saying. On August 5, 2019, the Centre revoked 's special status and reorganised it into two Union territories. Justice Gavai noted that Ambedkar had faced criticism for including too much federalism in the Constitution, with concerns that it might weaken national unity during times of war. "See the situation in the neighbouring countries, be it Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. Whenever our country faces challenges, it has remained united," he added. Gavai was speaking at the inauguration of the Constitution Preamble Park in Nagpur.
Scroll.in
an hour ago
- Scroll.in
Supreme Court orders release of law student from preventive detention under NSA
The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the immediate release of a 24-year-old law student, who had been in preventive detention in Bhopal's Central Jail for nearly a year under the National Security Act. The student was detained after a disturbance at a university campus in Madhya Pradesh's Betul which reportedly occurred after he allegedly clashed with a professor on June 14, 2024, Live Law reported. The first information report filed in the case included charges pertaining to attempt to murder. The student surrendered on June 16 and was placed under judicial custody. When he was in jail, the authorities issued a preventive detention order under the National Security Act which kept getting extended every three months, the legal news outlet reported. The National Security Act allows the Central or state government to order the detention of a person 'with a view to preventing him from acting in any manner prejudicial to the defence of India, the relations with foreign powers, or the security of India'. It may also order detention to prevent them from acting in any manner prejudicial 'to the security of the State', the 'maintenance of public order' or the 'maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community'. The police and district magistrates have the power to issue detention orders, subject to approval by the state government within 12 days. Rights bodies in India have criticised the National Security Act for vaguely worded charges, procedures that subvert the due processes of law, provisions that require courts to draw 'adverse inferences' against the accused, lack of mechanisms to prevent arbitrary or discriminatory detention, and sweeping immunities for government officials. During the hearing, a bench of Justices Ujjal Bhuyan and Vinod Chandran found the reasons for his detention insufficient to meet legal requirements, calling his confinement 'wholly untenable'. The Supreme Court found invoking the National Security Act unnecessary saying that there was no proper reason to keep him in preventive detention while he was already being held under regular legal charges, Live Law reported. 'At the most, these are all issues of law and order,' the court verbally observed. ''Public order' is something bigger.'
