In a couple of writ petitions filed before the Madhya Pradesh High Court aggrieved by an order dated 06-01-2026 by the District Magistrate, Jabalpur, ordering the petitioner’s detention under the National Security Act, 1980 for three months, which was subsequently enhanced on 01-04-2026 and 06-07-2026, a Division Bench of Justice Vivek Agarwal and Justice Avanindra Kumar Singh set aside the impugned order and allowed both petitions.
The petitioners submitted that they were peace-loving citizens whose fundamental rights had been violated, that the detention proceedings were malafide, and that no opportunity of hearing was provided, violating the principles of natural justice. It was also argued that the District Magistrate had relied on a list of twenty-two cases, most of which were stale (2001 to 2015), and that the factual position regarding these cases were misrepresented. While the District Magistrate showed thirteen cases as pending trial, one disposed of by compromise, three resulting in fines, and three acquittals, the petitioner had in fact filed judgments showing acquittal in sixteen cases, with minor fines in three cases and one case still under investigation.
The Court found that the report of the City Superintendent of Police was as it is forwarded by the Additional Superintendent of Police to the Superintendent of Police, who then forwarded the same report to the District Magistrate on the same day i.e., 06-01-2026. It was said that the sequence and timing of three different police personnel acting together on the same day and the language of the three communications revealed non-application of mind. The Court noted that the District Magistrate’s order showed several cases as subjudice, whereas the petitioner had filed orders demonstrating acquittals in numerous of those very cases, including cases decided as far back as 2006 and as recently as 2025.
It was noted that the facts set out in the rejoinder, had not been controverted by the State through any additional return, and that manipulation had been found in CCTV footage of 04-01-2026, for which a show cause notice had already been issued to a Sub Inspector. The Court concluded that despite fourteen cases shown as pending trial, the petitioner had actually been acquitted in eleven of them, demonstrating that correct facts had not been placed before the competent authority, and that the impugned order suffered from the vice of non-application of mind.
The Court opined that the lacuna of non-application of mind arising out of the incorrect supply of data and the mechanical forwarding of reports coupled with the District Magistrate’s blatant reliance on such data without seeking verification, vitiated the impugned detention order. It was stated that verification could have been obtained by the slightest of efforts by accessing the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS).
Referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in Ameena Begum v. State of Telangana, (2023) 9 SCC 587, the Court found no iota of doubt that there was no material to arrive at the subjective satisfaction for preventive detention, which was conceived as an extraordinary measure by the Constitution framers, but has been rendered ordinary by its reckless invocation.
The Court held that there was no requisite satisfaction recorded by the detaining authority, that non-application of mind was apparent, and that the haste in processing the matter within a single day had deprived the detaining authority of independent exercise of mind. It was stated that when the factual matrix was incorrect, the application of law could not be expected to be correct. Thus, the Court set aside the impugned order and disposed of both writ petitions.
