ANANTNAG: Six weeks after the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court quashed the detention of a man under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA), a law that allows imprisonment without trial for up to two years, on grounds that it was a case of mistaken identity, the man continues to languish in jail.
On April 15, 2024, police in Anantnag swooped down on the home of 34-year-old Imtiyaz Ahmad Ganie, a tractor driver from Anantnag's Chee village. That night, as his family prepared for Shab-e-Qadr prayers, he was taken away.
Within days, he found himself in Kot Bhalwal Jail in Jammu, more than 300 kilometers from home, and he had spent 520 days behind bars till the High Court order came.
What he suffered wasn’t just a year and a half of incarceration. Weeks after his arrest, Imtiyaz’s wife gave birth to a baby boy, but he has never seen the child. “A son was born to him, but the father has never held him,” said his neighbour. “Can anyone measure the pain of a child growing without his father, while the father longs to see his face?”
The ordeal turned even more painful in the months that followed. About a month ago, Imtiyaz’s mother passed away, but he was not allowed to attend her funeral. “He kept asking from jail if he could see her one last time,” recalled a neighbour. “She left this world waiting for her son.”
Imtiyaz’s family says he had no political affiliations or history of violence. “He has never even shouted a slogan or been part of anything illegal,” said his neighbour. The family couldn’t understand why he had been arrested.
With the court now clarifying that the dossier used to justify his detention was not about him at all, there is a sense of vindication in the family. The court provided him relief primarily because the dossier against him suggested the police were looking for another man.
While Imtiyaz’s case is simply one of mistaken identity, several PSA detentions that have come to light reveal a pattern that the court observed in this case – “detention” on grounds of “non-application of mind” and vaguely worded dossiers.
The High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh at Srinagar has quashed the detention of Imtiyaz Ahmad Ganie, declared the detention illegal on grounds of “non-application of mind,” and even pointed out that the case involved a glaring instance of mistaken identity.
The judgment, delivered by Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi, was reserved on August 20 and pronounced on September 3. It came in response to a habeas corpus petition filed by Ganie’s father, 62-year-old Ab Majeed Ganie, challenging Order No. 13/DMA/PSA/DET/2024 dated April 20, 2024, issued by the District Magistrate of Anantnag.
According to the petition, Imtiyaz was a peace-loving citizen who had never engaged in subversive activity. He was picked up by Anantnag Police on April 15, 2024, and subsequently shifted to Kot Bhalwal Jail, Jammu, under the PSA detention order. His counsel, Advocate Sheikh Younis, argued that the detention was arbitrary, that the grounds and materials were not furnished to him, and that the allegations bore no connection to his client.
The government, represented by Advocate Ilyas Nazir Laway, defended the detention. It said that an FIR (No. 49/2024) under the UAPA, the Arms Act, and the Explosive Substances Act had been registered against a hybrid terrorist of Jaish-e-Mohammad, Waseem Ahmad Ganie of Lukhbhawan. Investigations revealed a network of over-ground workers (OGWs) and suspects, and Imtiyaz was among those apprehended. Authorities maintained that the District Magistrate passed the detention order after being satisfied with the dossier placed before him.
However, the High Court found otherwise. On examining the detention record, it discovered that the grounds of detention actually referred to another individual, not the petitioner. Paragraph 2 of the grounds named “Imtiyaz Ahmad Wani s/o Late Ama Wani r/o Cheer Pora, Uttersoo, Shangus,” who had been questioned and released on a surety bond.
Justice Kazmi observed that “the aforesaid extract from the detention record, forming the basis of the impugned order, suggests that the detaining authority has failed to apply its mind to the material placed before it while passing the impugned order, and such lapse goes to the very root of the impugned order.”
“The detaining authority is shamelessly trying to support for the issuance of the impugned order from material which does not speak of the involvement of the detenue,” the court observed. “The foundation on the basis whereof the detenue has been implicated and detained under preventive detention has collapsed by default.”
The bench relied on Supreme Court precedents, including Ameena Begum vs. State of Telangana (2023) and Jai Singh vs. State of J&K(1985), both of which stress that preventive detention orders cannot stand if they reflect non-application of mind or are mere copies of police dossiers. “The liberty of a subject is a serious matter and it is not to be trifled in this casual, indifferent and routine manner,” Justice Kazmi quoted.
Holding that the petitioner had succeeded in proving his case, the court allowed the petition and directed, “The impugned Order No. 13/DMA/PSA/DET/2024 dated 20.04.2024 passed by the District Magistrate, Anantnag, whereby Imtiyaz Ahmad Ganie… has been detained, is quashed and the respondents are directed to release the detenue forthwith.”
This case, however, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Over the past several years judges in Srinagar and Jammu have repeatedly held that preventive-detention orders under the PSA are often built on dossiers that are verbatim copies of police reports, or on grounds so vague and stale that they show no independent thinking by the detaining authority.
The Jammu & Kashmir High Court has expressly faulted detaining authorities for issuing several PSA orders that are nothing more than word-for-word reproductions of police dossiers, a practice the court says, “speaks volumes about the non-application of mind” and renders the detention unlawful.
Similar rulings in 2023–2025 quashed multiple PSA orders on grounds of vagueness, failure to supply materials to the detenue, reliance on stale FIRs, and detention despite the existence of bail, revealing how most detentions are examples of perfunctory decision-making and not reasoned case-by-case adjudication.
In December 2024, the High Court quashed the PSA detention of Shakeel Mohammad, after finding that the “grounds of detention are mere reproduction of the dossier.” Counsel for the petitioner had argued that the detaining authority had lifted the language of the police dossier word-for-word, without adding any independent reasoning.
The court agreed, holding that such verbatim copying showed no independent application of mind. The court emphasized that detention grounds must be precise, relevant, and tailored to the individual case; where they are not, the order cannot stand.
The court also quashed the detention of Abdul Rehman Bhat in May 2025 after finding that officials had hidden the fact that he had already been granted bail in a related FIR in 2022. The bail order was never placed before the detaining authority. Calling the omission a “blatant negation of constitutional right,” the judges ruled that the detention was based on “procedural lapses” and unsupported claims, effectively outmaneuvering the court’s earlier decision to release him on bail.
In September 2024, the High Court dealt with a similar lapse in Mohammad Afreen Zargar’s case from Baramulla. Zargar’s PSA detention was based on an old FIR, but the authorities again failed to include the bail order in the dossier. The bench warned that the “message of law was being lost,” stressing that furnishing bail orders is essential to determine whether preventive detention is justified.
Detaining someone without this material, the court said, meant detention orders were being passed on “insufficient material”.
The same logic applied in Pulwama, where 22-year-old Ashiq Ahmad Rather was detained on August 6, 2019 under the PSA. His dossier listed three FIRs, all from 2016, but offered no evidence of any recent activity. The High Court, after he spent nearly 20 months in jail, struck the detention down, stressing that such a gap between alleged acts and the detention order broke the “live and proximate link” that preventive detention law requires.
In early 2025, the High Court quashed five PSA orders in one stroke, calling the grounds “vague, cryptic, irrelevant and non-existent.” The bench underlined a principle it has often repeated: if even one ground in a detention order is vague or irrelevant, the entire order collapses, because the detainee cannot defend themselves against a cloud of generalities.
Sajjad Gul, a journalist from Bandipora, was accused of “using social media as a tool to instigate people against Government establishments” and of making “controversial statements” instead of reporting on welfare schemes, and detained under PSA.
Yet, when the High Court reviewed his case in November 2023, it ruled that the “grounds of detention, as such, are general allegations against the detenu, with no specific instance/incident.” The judges said a detention based on such sweeping language was “not sustainable, for the reason that the detaining authority … has not applied its mind … curtailing his liberty which is a valuable and cherishable right guaranteed under Article 21.”
The vaguest charge in Sajjad Gul's PSA dossier was that his reporting as a journalist "created enmity and acrimony against government machinery". Yet the detention order failed to specify which posts or articles supposedly did this, on what dates they were published, or how they actually disrupted public order.
The court noted that authorities simply accused him of being a "negative critic" of government policies without citing a single concrete instance of false reporting or unlawful content.
The court also noted that key documents cited in the grounds had not even been supplied to Dar, depriving him of the right to defend himself.
In December 2023, the High Court quashed the PSA detention of Bashir Ahmad Koka of Anantnag. Authorities had claimed he was linked to a proscribed organisation and might “disturb the Amarnath Yatra,” even citing an FIR from 2004, a case in which he had already been acquitted.
Justice Sanjeev Kumar pulled no punches. “A person cannot be detained under preventive detention on the basis of totally vague and unsubstantiated allegations,” he observed. The court stressed there was “nothing on record” showing any fresh activity by Koka between his release in April 2022 and the new detention order in June 2022. The judge added: “I also see no reason to press into service an FIR registered in the year 2004 … when the petitioner has already faced trial … and has been acquitted by the competent Court. The Detaining Authority has not shown any awareness about the acquittal.”
Even senior professionals have not been spared. In March 2025, the High Court quashed the PSA detention of Nazir Ahmad Ronga, a former president of the Kashmir High Court Bar Association, after finding the allegations against him “vague, ambiguous and lacking in material particulars.” The court held that the detaining authority had shown “total non-application of mind” in ordering his incarceration.
One of the most absurd allegations was that the detenue "provided a platform for terrorism" simply by serving as president of the Kashmir High Court Bar Association, a professional legal body whose constitution doesn't mention supporting terrorism and which the detenue himself amended in 2024 to remove objectionable clauses at the government's own request.
The authorities effectively criminalized his leadership of a lawyers' organization, despite his documented opposition to separatist leaders and his receipt of death threats for publicly criticizing them.
Another striking example in this dossier cites vague "activities" from 1999, 2008, and 2010 when no FIR was filed and no charges brought. It also ignores that the detenue was already detained in 2019 with nothing found against him then or since. The authorities resurrected decades-old, unsubstantiated claims without concrete evidence or any explanation for why conduct allegedly serious enough to warrant detention in 2024 didn't merit even a police complaint when it supposedly occurred.
In Kishtwar, five local trade unionists were detained in November 2024 for leading protests against hydropower projects in the Chenab Valley. The official dossiers claimed they were obstructing “projects of national importance” and posed a threat to public order. When one of them, Muhammad Jaffer Sheikh, challenged the order, the High Court noted that the dossier relied on FIRs from 1997, 2015 and 2019, none of which had led to convictions, and all of which were years old. Quashing the order, the court ruled that reliance on decades-old FIRs with no fresh allegations made the detention “unsustainable”.
The ‘Lawless’ law
The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA), 1978 was originally introduced by the government of Sheikh Abdullah to curb timber smuggling, but it has since evolved into a sweeping tool of preventive detention. The Act empowers authorities to detain a person without trial for up to two years on grounds of posing a threat to “the security of the state” or “public order.”
Unlike regular criminal cases, where evidence must stand the scrutiny of a court, preventive detention under the PSA relies on subjective satisfaction of the District Magistrate or Divisional Commissioner. This means that a dossier prepared by police — often vague or repetitive — can be enough to send someone to prison, without the need for a charge sheet or trial.
Human rights groups have consistently criticized the law. Amnesty International has called it a “lawless law,” arguing that it violates international human rights obligations by permitting indefinite detention without fair trial guarantees. Reports by Amnesty and Human Rights Watch document how the PSA has been used extensively in Jammu and Kashmir to silence dissent.
In practice, the law has not only targeted suspected militants but also young men accused of stone-pelting, political activists, trade union leaders, and even journalists.
In 2019, for instance, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Ministers Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti were all booked under the PSA following the abrogation of Article 370. Journalists like Aasif Sultan and Fahad Shah were detained under the Act, raising alarms about its use to stifle press freedom.
Omar’s Public Safety Act, 1978 dossier mentioned, “The capacity of the subject to influence people for any cause can be gauged from the fact that he was able to convince his electorate to come out and vote in huge numbers even during the peak of militancy and poll boycotts.”
Awaiting Imtiyaz’s Return
Despite the High Court’s clear directions, Imtiyaz Ahmad Ganie remains in detention. His family says the wait has become unbearable. Every day, his father, now in his sixties, hopes for a knock on the door that will bring his son back.
His mother’s death has deepened the family’s sorrow. She passed away in September, few days after he was granted bail, with her last wish unfulfilled — to see her son one final time.
He could have seen her, if he was released after the court decision. However, Imtiyaz was not even allowed to attend her funeral or offer prayers for her burial. “She kept asking for him till the very end,” a neighbour said. “Even in her last moments, she was waiting for his return.”
(The identity of the reporter of this story has been withheld due to fear of potential reprisal.)
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