Lok Sabha MP Amritpal Singh has moved the Punjab and Haryana High Court challenging his third consecutive detention order under the National Security Act (NSA), the Live Law reported.
The petition follows the Supreme Court’s November 10 decision declining to entertain his writ plea against the latest NSA detention, while granting him liberty to approach the High Court and requesting that the matter be decided within six weeks.
Amritpal Singh, the MP from Khadoor Sahib in Punjab, has been under preventive detention since April 2023 under successive NSA orders. In his plea, he argues that there is no credible material linking him to any alleged prejudicial activities and that the continued detention is arbitrary, lacks jurisdiction, and violates the constitutional safeguards under Articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution.
The petition contends that authorities have not provided any material supporting the allegations made by the Detaining Authority.
It states that mere references to pending investigations, FIRs, or being named as an accused, without supplying the underlying evidence, render the detention order legally unsustainable. Preventive detention, the plea argues, cannot rest solely on the existence of FIRs or ongoing investigations unless the detaining authority can show that the alleged acts have disturbed public order or pose an imminent threat to it.
“Preventive detention cannot be justified on vague, unverified, or anticipatory assumptions,” the petition said.
Amritpal Singh, a Sikh preacher and Khalistan sympathiser, was detained after the Punjab Police launched a crackdown on his organisation, Waris Punjab De, in March 2023. The action began shortly after he and his supporters stormed a police station in Amritsar on February 23 during a protest over the arrest of one of his aides.
Under the National Security Act, 1980, a preventive detention law, the central or state government can arrest and detain any person for up to one year, and even longer through extensions, without filing a formal charge or conducting a trial.
Detention can be ordered solely on the government’s subjective satisfaction that the individual is acting or is likely to act in a manner prejudicial to national security or public order.
Critics describe the NSA as one of India’s most draconian and undemocratic laws because it entirely bypasses the regular criminal justice system and gives authorities almost unlimited power to imprison people based not on proven past offences but on suspicion about possible future behaviour.
On the other hand, on Thursday, two close associates of Khadoor Sahib MP Amritpal Singh, Pappalpreet Singh and Kulwant Singh Raoke, were produced before the Ajnala court. Both were already lodged in jail in another case and were brought to the court on a production warrant.
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