New Delhi: The Supreme Court has issued notice on a habeas corpus petition filed against the detention of Congress leader and former Union minister Saifuddin Soz, who has been under house arrest since August last year.As per LiveLaw, the notice was issued by a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra after a submission by P. Chidambaram and Abhishek Manu Singhvi that the octogenarian leader had been kept in detention for over 10 months, without being told about the grounds. Both of them appeared on behalf of Soz’s wife and noted that the arrest had been made without a single document, said a PTI report.While Singhvi asserted that the matter should be taken up on an urgent basis due to Soz’s advanced age, the Supreme Court did not agree, listing the matter for the second week of July.The petition on behalf of Soz’s wife, Mumtazunnisa Soz and filed through Advocate Sunil Fernandes, has invoked Article 32 to seek that her husband should be produced before the Supreme Court.She also held that it was due to the “arbitrary exercise of powers” by the UT government that “all efforts by him to obtain a copy of the detention order(s) have been of no avail”.Eighty-two-year-old Soz was placed under house arrest in Srinagar on August 5, 2019, the day that the Centre passed a presidential order revoking the autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir under the Indian constitution.After being detained, Soz was told by the station head officer that his detention was “purportedly under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978”. When asked for a copy of the detention, the police refused and stated that the “written orders have been received by the concerned officers for implementation of the order”, according to the petition.Soz had also written a letter to the principal secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir on May 15, requesting her to release him as he had not committed any offence under any Act to be detained without communication of reason for a prolonged period. There was no response.Also Read: These Kashmiri Leaders Lost Loved Ones to Terrorism. Now the State Sees Them as a ‘Threat’“The detenu has been wrongfully detained and kept in house arrest for an indefinite period, grounds of which have neither been communicated to him nor has a copy of the impugned detention order been furnished to him despite several requests over the course of ten months, which is violative of the exercise of the fundamental rights of the detenu,” said the petition.The petition also asserted that the “detention is wholly contrary and perverse to the constitutional safeguards laid down under Article 21 and 22 of the Constitution of India, as well as the law on preventive detention”, as well as “in stark contravention of the statutory scheme” of the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act.It added that Soz had always “advocated for the Union of India” and “vehemently opposed separatist or anti-India voices in J&K (despite his daughter being kidnapped by such forces)”.Noting that Soz had “consistently demonstrated an unwavering loyalty to the Indian Constitution even in the face of separatist threats”, the petition argued that he couldn’t be “considered by any stretch of imagination to be a threat to public safety”.Soz is a former MP who represented the Baramulla Constituency and has also served as a Union environment minister and water resources minister.