High Court of Judicature at Madras: A Division Bench comprising of Rajiv Shakdher, J. and N. Sathish Kumar, J. addressed a petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India wherein the petitioner seeked the setting aside of the detention order which confined him to the Central Prison and following the quashment, seeked the court to free the petitioner.
The counsel for the respondent had pointed out that no charge-sheet had been filed with regards to the crime that was allegedly committed by the petitioner. Thus the court decided to take up the main petition for hearing. The court perused the detention order of the petitioner and noticed that the petitioner had 2 cases registered against him. The Court also observed that the detenu had not filed any bail application in the second case till the date of passing of the impugned detention order. Although, the detaining officer took into account the fact that bail was granted to the petitioner for the other case, and hence, concluded that there stood a great possibility for the petitioner to be granted bail for the present case as well.
The Court held that the order couldn’t be sustained since despite the detenu having been arrested on 14/2/2017 and the order having been given on 2/5/2017 followed by a notice on 23/6/2017, no counter affidavit had been filed. No explanation had been provided for the enormous delay. Along with that, despite the order having been passed on the said date, the detenu had not applied for bail. The Court thought that the detaining officer’s reasoning was flawed as he thought that bail should be granted since the detenu was granted bail for the previous crime. [Kuppan @ Sathishkumar v. Secretary to Government, 2017 SCC OnLine Mad 11530, dated 15.12.2017]
