Srinagar: The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh has quashed two preventive detention orders over the last week, saying that such extraordinary powers must be invoked only in exceptional circumstances and not as a routine administrative measure.The court’s orders relate to two cases, one filed under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA), which allows detention without trial for up to two years and the other related to the Prevention of Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1988 (PIT NDPS).A single-judge bench of Justice Rahul Bharti quashed detention orders against Seerat-ul-Hassan Dhar of Srinagar under the PSA and against Adnan Rasool Ganie under the PIT NDPS. He directed their immediate release unless required in any other case. While Dhar’s release was ordered on July 9, the order in Ganie’s petition came on July 13.In Dhar’s case under the PSA, the court also came down heavily on the Union Territory authorities, observing that they had acted with a “preconceived intention” to keep him behind bars and describing the detention as a “sheer abuse of process of law.”Originally introduced to curb timber smuggling, the PSA has over the decades been increasingly used against alleged militants, separatists, political activists, protesters and, in some cases, alleged drug peddlers.According to the high court’s e-court web site, the pendency of PSA cases has risen sharply in recent years, particularly in Kashmir, where two cases from 2023 are pending, seven from 2024, 115 from 2025 and 78 from 2026. At the Jammu bench of the High Court, two PSA cases are pending from 2023, four from 2024, 13 from 2025 and 40 from 2026.The PSA detention against Dhar was first issued in September 2022. The high court quashed that detention after its expiry on September 17, 2024, paving the way for his release. However, instead of being released, he was kept in custody, under preventive proceedings under Sections 126 and 170 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, led by the Executive Magistrate, from September 14 to 19, 2024.A fresh police dossier was then prepared on October 7, 2024. Based on that dossier, the District Magistrate issued a new PSA detention order on 11 October 2024, which was executed on 15 October 2024.Dhar was arrested in connection with the 2017 lynching of Deputy Superintendent of Police Mohammad Ayub Pandith outside Srinagar’s historic Jamia Masjid on Shab-e-Qadr. Pandith was not in uniform while he allegedly filmed a crowd sloganeering when his identity was revealed. A mob overpowered him, stripped him and beat him to death.The incident drew widespread condemnation and Dhar was among those arrested during the investigation. One of the accused, Hizbul Mujahideen militant Sajid Ahmad Gilkar, was killed in an encounter with security forces in Budgam in July 2017.Dhar had challenged his fresh detention via the October 11, 2024 order before the court, which directed his personal liberty be restored and he let go “from the place of confinement wherever he is being held”. It also directed the concerned Jail Superintendent to ensure immediate compliance.Although amendments in PSA in 2011 raised the minimum detention age to 18 and sought to place limits on detention, rights groups have continued to criticise the law. The law has been described as “draconian” by many politicians and civil society activists in the Valley because of its stringent preventive detention provisions. It has remained in force even after the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 and is a key part of the Union Territory’s security framework.“The petitioner’s preventive detention is nothing but a sheer abuse of process of law resorted to by the Senior Superintendent of Police, (SSP) Srinagar complimented by … District Magistrate, Srinagar and confirmed by the Home Department, government of Jammu and Kashmir without any respect to the constitutional sensitivity, which is meant to attend exercise of power in the matter of carrying out preventive detention custody of a citizen, and which is not meant to come as a matter of routine and ritual but only as an exceptional exercise leaving no other option for the District Police/Administration other than getting the person deprived of his personal liberty,” the court observed in Dhar’s case.In the other case, Ganie had challenged his detention order passed on July 21, 2025 by the Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir, under the PIT NDPS Act.“If the dossier was of 04.03.2025, then there was no reason for the … Divisional Commissioner, Kashmir to defer his interest and indulgence for a period of more than four months in coming up with [a] detention order … dated 21.07.2025,” the court observed in Ganie’s judgment. In other words, the court held that the police report (dossier) on Ganie was received on March 4, 2025, while the order for detention was passed several months later, on August 21.“This time gap, which has not been explained, renders the very basis of the petitioner’s preventive detention a mockery of the PIT NDPS Act, 1988 and the mischief which it intends to check vis-à-vis a prospective detenu falling within the scope of mischief of Section 3,” the court observed.The court emphasised that preventive detention cannot become “a matter of routine and ritual” and must be used only as an exceptional measure when no other legal alternative exists to address a perceived threat.The court noted that Ganie’s detention was based solely on his alleged involvement in FIR No. 58/2022 registered at Parimpora Police Station and the dossier on him prepared by the Senior Superintendent of Police, Srinagar, portraying him as likely to continue trafficking drugs.But the unexplained delay, the court held, undermined the very basis of preventive detention under the PIT NDPS Act. Holding that the unexplained time gap rendered the detention legally unsustainable and defeated the object of the Act, the court quashed both the detention order and its subsequent confirmation by the Jammu and Kashmir government.The J&K High Court and the Supreme Court have, on multiple instances, intervened against what they see as the arbitrary use of preventive detention laws, including the PSA exercised by law enforcement agencies. COurts have consistently ruled that preventive detention, as a deviation from standard criminal law protections, cannot be justified on ambiguous bases, outdated claims, unaccounted delays, or automatic endorsements of police records.The Apex court has stressed that personal freedom under Article 21 of the constitution cannot be limited by the routine or casual exercise of preventive detention powers, and that authorities must adhere strictly to procedural safeguards when enforcing such laws. The courts have also applied comparable scrutiny to preventive detention laws, emphasising that these detention statutes must not serve as alternatives to standard criminal procedures or a way to circumvent due process.The petitioners were represented by advocate Tuba Manzoor Ahmad for Dhar and advocate Tawheed Ahmad Sofi for Ganie, while the Jammu and Kashmir administration was represented through its counsel in court. In both Dhar’s and Ganie’s cases, copies of the high court judgments were reviewed by The Wire.