Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court (HC) has ordered the release of a Kashmiri man who has been arbitrarily jailed for nearly two years under the Public Safety Act without links to any criminal activities.The court also rebuked an Indian Administrative Service officer for “failing to apply his mind” before approving the preventive detention under the stringent law.“This court has no hesitation in observing that the Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA), 1978, vis-a-vis the petitioner has been invoked by non-seriousness of standard with which even a motorist is not subjected to a routine traffic challan,” the court observed on February 5 while quashing the detention order.Although the high court delivered its verdict in the case more than three weeks ago, a copy of the order became available only on February 27, a day ago, after it was reported by Bar and Bench.The order states that the then senior superintendent of police (SSP) Anantnag G.V. Sundeep Chakarvarthy wrote a letter (CS/71/2024/791 2-18) on April 17, 2024 to the district magistrate of Anantnag Syed Fakhruddin Hamid, a 2017 IAS officer, seeking the detention of Shabir Ahmad Dar, a resident of Kokernag, under the PSA.SSP Chakarvarthy asserted that the stringent law was necessary to prevent Dar “from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of the State”.‘In touch with an accused in a case’A two-page dossier by the SSP accused Dar, 28, a private teacher at Darul Ahiya-Aloom Bindoo Madrassa in Kokernag, of involvement in an anti-terror case (FIR No. 219/2022 dated February 2 2022 at Anantnag police station).The case has been filed under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act 1967 and sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 130 (penalty for aiding the escape of, rescuing or harbouring a state prisoner or prisoner of war) of the now defunct Indian Penal Code.Documents submitted in the court show that Dar was detained by Anantnag police in the case because his call detail records showed that he was in touch with Rouf Ahmad Dar, a resident of Bumdoora in Kokernag and one of the accused arrested in the case.Dar was not named as an accused in the case but only asked to sign a surety bond and later set free due to “insufficient evidence”.However, the then district magistrate of Anantnag, Hamid, framed the grounds of detention (order no 10/DMA/PSA/DET/2024), as mandated by the PSA law, and approved Dar’s detention under the PSA on April 20 2024 on the basis of “unmentioned, unreferred (sic) and unstated” allegations in the dossier, the court observed.Hamid took over as the district magistrate of north Kashmir’s Baramulla district earlier this week on transfer from Anantnag while Chakarvarthy has been serving as SSP Srinagar since April last year.The detention of Dar was approved on April 29, 2024 by the home department of Jammu and Kashmir (order no Home/PB-V/854-24). The case was referred to the advisory board constituted under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 for its opinion which confirmed the detention (order no Home/PB-V/1115 of 2024) on May 27, 2024.The PSA advisory board is led by retired J&K high court judge Mohan Lal as its chairman while Surjeet Singh and Kossar Ahmad Qureshi, both retired district and sessions judges, are its other members.Nisar Ahmad, Dar’s brother, challenged the detention through a habeas corpus petition which was filed by their counsel Shabir Ahmad Dar on May 15 2024.‘Home raided, booked under PSA’Recalling the day, Ahmad told The Wire that he was directed over phone by a police official to bring over Dar to Kokernag police station “for questioning in connection with a case”.“Our home was raided by the army some days earlier and I thought it was a routine summon. But it was only when we got there that we learnt that he has been booked under the PSA,” Ahmad, a village guard (chowkidar), said.He said that Dar was initially lodged at Kot Bhalwal jail in Jammu but he was later shifted to a jail in Varanasi of Uttar Pradesh, “In these months we were not able to visit him due to our poor financial condition,” Ahmad said.In its order on February 5, a single bench of Justice Rahul Bharti observed that the district magistrate approved the detention “literally on the dictation of the SSP Anantnag” without applying his own mind.The court observed that a “bare ordinary reflection” by the district magistrate would have revealed that Dar was not an accused in FIR No 219/2022 which was cited by the SSP to justify the “so called apprehension about unmentioned, unreferred (sic) and unstated alleged activities (by Dar) … perceived and assumed to be prejudicial to the security of the State”.Justice Bharti observed that Dar was subjected to his ordeal “just by a blank reference” by the SSP “followed by equally bland application of mind” by the district magistrate.“The Senior Superintendent of the concerned Jail detaining the petitioner is directed to release the petitioner forthwith, if not required in any other case,” the court ruled.Following the reading down of Article 370 in 2019, the J&K administration has extensively resorted to the use of the PSA which the rights activists have alleged was being used as a political tool to silence the government critics in the Union territory.Speaking in J&K assembly last year, chief minister Omar Abdullah said that more than 400 people were languishing in various jails of the country under the PSA which has been termed as a “lawless law” by Amnesty International.