The Jammu and Kashmir High Court on Monday quashed the preventive detention of Aam Aadmi Party MLA Mehraj Malik under the Public Safety Act, setting aside the order issued by the Doda district administration in September.
Malik, who represents the Doda constituency and heads the party’s Jammu and Kashmir unit, had been detained for one year on September 8 on charges of disturbing public order.
The Public Safety Act is a preventive detention law that allows persons to be taken into custody to prevent them from acting against “the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order” in the Union Territory. He was the first sitting legislator in the Union Territory to be detained under the law.
On Monday, the court ruled that the grounds cited for Malik’s detention did not meet the legal threshold of “public order” and were largely related to matters of law and order already covered under existing first information reports.
Justice Mohammad Yousuf Wani said that a preventive detention order “cannot be made a substitute for pressing into service the ordinary law of the land so as to relieve and absolve the investigating authority of its functions to investigate crimes”.
He added that there was no sufficient basis to show that Malik “is likely to act in any manner prejudicial to the social disorder”.
The court noted that many of the cases against Malik were either under investigation or related to Model Code of Conduct violations during elections or protests, and did not justify preventive detention.
It also observed that there was no proximity or “live link” between older “stale allegations” and the detention order issued in September.
Malik has been named in 18 first information reports and 16 daily diary reports at police stations in Doda district. The cases allege that he disrupted public order when the administration was engaged in relief work after heavy rains and flash floods in Jammu and Kashmir.
Malik has also been accused of attacking officials on duty, locking them in their offices, and abusing and intimidating them in public. He is also facing charges of abduction.
Malik was elected from Doda in the 2024 Assembly elections, defeating Bharatiya Janata Party candidate Gajay Singh by 4,538 votes, securing the AAP its first entry into the Jammu and Kashmir legislature.
He had earlier won a seat in the Doda District Development Council from Kahara in the 2020 elections, from which he resigned after becoming an MLA.
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