Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir high court quashed the preventive detention of a man booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA), 1978, for possessing literature banned by the administration. The court said in its order that mere possession of books with “dispiriting titles” does not by itself make a person a criminal to be booked under the stringent law.Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi, while hearing a petition on September 3, directed the authorities to release the detained man, Shafat Maqbool Wani, immediately. The petition was filed on Wani’s behalf by his uncle.The court found that Wani’s detention order issued by the district magistrate of Kupwara suffered from non-application of mind and had wrongly attributed the authorship of certain books to him. These books, which authorities called anti-national literature, were seized from Wani’s residence.Police had claimed that the books titled Construction of an Islamic Order in Hindutva Reimagination and The Saffronisation of Occupied Kashmir: Demystifying Hindutva Settlers, Colonial Designers were seized from Wani’s house. They had alleged that the seized literature promoted separatist ideology.It is pertinent to mention that on August 5, 2025, the J&K Home Department banned the publication and circulation of 25 books about Kashmir. The administration alleged that those books promoted a “false narrative” and “secessionism” in the region. The order was issued on the sixth anniversary of the reading down of Article 370.The banned titles concerned Kashmir’s politics, history and the conflict, including works by prominent authors and researchers such as Arundhati Roy (Azadi), A.G. Noorani (The Kashmir Dispute 1947–2012), Anuradha Bhasin (A Dismantled State), Hafsa Kanjwal (Colonising Kashmir), Sumantra Bose (Contested Lands and Kashmir at the Crossroads), Victoria Schofield (Kashmir in Conflict) and collective volumes like Kashmir: The Case for Freedom and Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, alongside several other regional and religious texts.Also read: Prison Diaries: Students and Minors Recount Horrors of Kashmir’s Public Safety ActThe authorities had also relied on Wani’s alleged involvement in a 2025 FIR registered under Sections 13, 17 and 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA).Wani’s uncle challenged the detention order, primarily alleging non-application of mind. His advocate Zahid Hussain Dar argued before the court that the detaining authority had acted mechanically and relied on a case registered at Handwara police station under the Arms Act and UAPA.The court noted that Wani had already been granted bail after the investigating agency’s request to extend his remand beyond 155 days was rejected by the special judge, NIA court, Jammu.The detention grounds also referred to Wani’s family background, including that his father was an ex-militant associated with Al-Barq. He had surrendered in 1990. Wani’s participation in international academic conferences and possession of books relating to Hindutva and Kashmir were also mentioned by the authorities.The court rejected the authorities’ contention that Wani had developed a separatist ideology since childhood because his father had been an ex-militant.“The said assertion is delusory and the preventive detention, ordered so conveniently on such imaginary belief, is nothing but an unmindful exercise of power.”The court further noted that, apart from Wani’s involvement in the FIR, “no prejudicial activity even for namesake has been attributed to the petitioner.”Also read: High Court Says PSA Invoked Against Kashmiri Man With Less Scrutiny Than ‘Routine Traffic Challan’Being a scholar, the petitioner could be expected to possess a variety of literary material, the court said. It also observed that the authorities had failed to demonstrate any subversive activity on Wani’s part.On the books seized from Wani, the court observed, “The alleged anti-national literature shown to have been seized from the detenue has also presumably weighed with the respondents to brand the detenue as an anti-national, however, the said literature has wrongly been attributed to the detenue having been authored by him.“The learned counsel for the petitioner is quite justified in submitting that the petitioner, being an academic scholar, is expected to be in possession of variety of literary means, therefore, a mere possession of the books with dispiriting titles does not ipso facto make the petitioner/detenue a criminal against whom the preventive detention was required to be invoked,” the order said.The court referred to the Supreme Court’s judgment in Ameena Begum vs State of Telangana, saying that preventive detention requires the detaining authority to apply its mind to the relevant circumstances and establish a live and proximate link between the past conduct of a person and the imperative need for detention.Wani had challenged a detention order dated September 13, 2025, issued by the District Magistrate, Kupwara, under the PSA. The order stated that his detention was necessary to prevent activities considered detrimental to the security of the state.