Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court news: Highlighting that the law does not permit the UT/State to treat a “child” as a “threat” to be preventively detained, the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh high court has quashed a detention order under the Public Safety Act because it was based on acts committed during the petitioner’s juvenility.

Justice M A Chowdhary was hearing a plea of a man seeking to quash the detention order of 2023 against him. It was issued by the authorities when he was at the age of 16.

“The law does not permit the UT/State to treat a child as a threat to be preventively detained. The constitutional vision mandates reform, not repression. Preventive detention is an extraordinary power; its application to a child not only ‘violates’ statutory safeguards but also ‘erodes’ the constitutional commitment to reformative justice,” the court said in its May 11 order.

The order added that a perusal of the detention order reveals no reference to the age of the petitioner, no consideration of the applicability of the Juvenile Justice Act, but only a mechanical reproduction of the police dossier.

Justice Chowdhary noted that the failure to consider a vital and relevant factor, i.e., the juvenility of the petitioner on the date of the alleged activities, renders the order vitiated on account of non-application of mind.

The petitioner, now 18, challenged the detention order passed by the District Magistrate of Pulwama on April 30, 2025. The detention was primarily founded on an FIR from 2023 involving allegations of anti-national activities and the killing of a civilian.

The principal ground of challenge is that the detainee was a juvenile on the date of the alleged activities as well as on the date of registration of the FIR, based on which the detention order was passed, rendering the order legally unsustainable.

The petitioner produced a secondary school examination certificate showing his date of birth as April 7, 2007, confirming he was approximately 16 years old at the time of the alleged 2023 occurrences.

Consequently, he had been processed through the juvenile justice framework and spent 15 months in a juvenile home before being released on bail in early 2025.

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Shheryar submitted that the petitioner was below 18 years on the relevant date and, thus, governed by the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.

He submitted that the detaining authority has failed to consider this crucial aspect; that the petitioner has been detained under the Public Safety Act on false and flimsy grounds without any justification.

He further raised the plea of vagueness in the grounds of detention. It is being stated that the allegations leveled in the grounds of detention relate to the year 2023, and those activities have no proximity with the present time for the purpose of preventive detention unless any fresh activity is not attributed to the petitioner.