The Jammu Kashmir & Ladakh High Court on Thursday ordered the release of a Public Safety Act detenu, Mudasir Ahmad Bhat, from Udhampur district jail, holding that his detention “is painful and pinching to the very constitutional sensitivity with which preventive detention jurisdiction is supposed to be exercised and carried out”.Quoting Albert Einstein’s words — that “who is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted with the important matters” — at the outset of his judgment, Justice Rahul Bharti pointed to a “discord” in the dates in the police dossier, the district magistrate’s detention order, and the Udhampur district jail superintendent’s communication about when the petitioner was called to the police station, when he was detained and when he was sent to jail.Bhat, a salesman at a tin shop in Pulwama, was formally detained under the Public Safety Act on May 1, 2025, and handed over to the Superintendent of Udhampur district jail in Jammu province the same day.The district magistrate’s detention order dated April 30, 2025, was based on a dossier submitted by the Pulwama SSP portraying the petitioner as an overground worker providing logistics to terrorists operating in the district and luring youth to join terror ranks. The order was confirmed by the Home Department, which prescribed a six-month detention period from May 1 to October 31 last year — a decision eventually upheld by the advisory board mandated to review such detention orders.On May 27, Bhat, acting through his wife Shagufta Akhter, challenged the detention order in the High Court.In its order, what drew the court’s attention was the petitioner’s assertion in the opening paragraph of the writ petition that he was arrested without any justification on April 22, 2025, days before the district magistrate’s order on April 30, 2025, and the formal detention on May 1, 2025.“However, the truth comes sneaking out from the very correspondence of the respondent No. 3 — Superintendent District Jail, Udhampur, who in a communication dated July 25, 2025, addressed to the Additional Secretary to Govt. of Jammu & Kashmir, Home Department, is on record saying that the petitioner is lodged in District Jail, Udhampur with effect from 05.12.2024, meaning thereby even prior to date 22.04.2025 as asserted by the petitioner in his writ petition,” Justice Bharti observed.Story continues below this adHe said, “Very disturbingly, the respondent No. 3 — Superintendent District Jail, Udhampur refers to the lodgment of the petitioner in District Jail, Udhampur with effect from 05.12.2024 under the J&K Public Safety Act, 1978 by reference to the very impugned order of the respondent No. 2 — District Magistrate, Pulwama, dated 30.04.2025.”:Pointing out that the communication was from the Udhampur district jail superintendent to the Pulwama district magistrate, Justice Bharti observed, “Thus, it occurred to none i.e. Additional Secretary to Govt. of Jammu & Kashmir, Home Department as well as the respondent No. 2 — District Magistrate, Pulwama to bother their attention and concern by calling upon the respondent No. 3 — Superintendent District Jail, Udhampur as to on what basis he came to reflect the fact of petitioner’s lodgment in Jail with effect from 05.12.2024.”There was also discord in the dates on which the petitioner was called to the police station, as mentioned in the SSP’s dossier and the detention order passed by the district magistrate, the court said.While the dossier says he was called to a police station twice — on February 28, 2025, and April 23, 2025 — the District Magistrate, Pulwama, in his detention order said Bhat was called on February 28, 2025, and February 23, 2025, “paying least attention to read the very draft of his grounds of detention that there was no such calling of the petitioner on February 23 reported in the dossier,” Justice Bharti observed.Story continues below this ad“The aforesaid scenario only reflects that there is no one at the end of the respondents bearing alertness and aliveness to the handling of preventive detention cases which seem to be left to be attended to by the subordinate staff at the disposal of Home Department, Govt. of UT of Jammu & Kashmir as well as District Magistracy, otherwise it is inconceivable that glaring errors of such nature would have been spared attention and correction at the end of the respective respondents,” he observed, declaring the district magistrate’s order — read with the consequent approval, confirmation and extension orders passed by the Home Department — illegal.This is not the first instance of the High Court criticising the way cases involving PSA detentions have been handled. Last month, Justice Bharti had quashed the detention of 28-year-old Shabir Ahmad Dar of Anantnag’s Kokernag, saying PSA had been invoked against him in such a non-serious way that even routine traffic violations are not handled similarly.However, by then, the petitioner had already spent nearly two years in the high-security Kot Bhalwal jail near Jammu.The PSA empowers district magistrates to detain anyone on grounds of security of the state without trial for up to two years. Mainstream politicians from Kashmir have been critical of the provision, especially after several people were detained following the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019.Story continues below this adWhile Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has promised to scrap PSA after statehood is restored to J&K, former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and People’s Conference supremo Sajad Lone have been demanding the release of hundreds of people allegedly detained under PSA.