as per order has already expired,” the bench said. At the outset, Mehta said he had not received the copy of the plea and sought time to reply to it. Senior advocate Dushyant Dave, appearing for Qayoom, said the detention order was for a limited period, for around one year. The bench said that was the reason it has issued a notice on the plea during the last date of hearing. Dave replied that he understands why the Solicitor General was uncomfortable and complained that was uncomfortable and complained that the present matter was not listed despite specific directions of the court. Justice Kaul told Mehta that firstly his detention period has expired and secondly his ideology remains the same. Dave pointed out that Qayoom is 73 years old and should not be kept in Tihar jail. “In the current scenario of Covid-19 would you like to keep this petition pending,” the bench told Mehta, who said that Qayoom’s ideology remained the same.
On June 26, the top court had issued notice to the J-K administration and sought its reply on Qayoom’s plea challenging his detention order. Qayoom has also sought a direction to shift him from Tihar jail here to central jail in Srinagar on medical ground. He has challenged the May 28 order of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court rejecting his plea against his prolonged “illegal detention” under the PSA in jails outside the UT. He said he is a Senior Advocate with more than 40 years’ standing at the Bar and has served as President of the J&K High Court Bar Association for many terms, including from 2014 till the present day. Qayoom said he was detained on the intervening night of August 4th and 5th, 2019, under the provisions.
of Jammu and Kashmir Code of Criminal Procedure and thereafter, an order of detention under the PSA was passed against him on August 7, 2019. He said that on August 8 he was taken to Central Jail, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, without any prior notice of intimation, where he was kept in solitary confinement. He said the high court’s May 28 order is ex facie unsustainable in law as it is premised on “stale, irrelevant, remote, vague, imprecise and deficient” grounds of detention.
“These FIRs are stale, irrelevant and have no proximate, pertinent or live link to the present, and are thus superfluous and extraneous to the satisfaction required in law qua the tendency or propensity to act in a manner prejudicial to public order.. Pertinently, even in the said decade-old 4 FIRs, the Petitioner was neither arrested, nor any charge sheet ever filed by the police against the Petitioner,” he added in his plea. Qayoom said he had already been detained in 2010 on the basis of the said FIRs under the PSA, and the said detention was subsequently revoked. “Thus, the same FIRs cannot be used to pass another order of detention under the PSA, as held by this Hon’ble Court…,” his plea said. Qayoom said he is sufferingfrom serious health ailments and is at a high-risk vulnerability for Covid-19 due to his co-morbid conditions. “The Petitioner has numerous serious medical conditions for which he has been receiving treatment for the last 25 years under the care and supervision of his doctors in Srinagar, Kashmir. The Petitioner is also dependent on his family for ensuring the regular and daily intake of medicines and regular injections,” he added. As an interim prayer, he sought his transfer to
