Court fails to quash detention of Kashmiri youth held on baseless charges
Jammu: In Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the High Court has upheld the detention of a Kashmiri youth, Rehmatullah, under draconian Public Safety Act (PSA) despite allegations of procedural violations and arbitrary application of the law.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the High Court judge, Justice M.A. Chowdhary, dismissed the petition challenging the PSA detention of Rehmatullah, son of Abdul Ghani Padder, a resident of Dessa Bhata, Doda. The detention order, issued by the District Magistrate of Doda on November 9, 2024, had placed the youth under preventive detention on vague allegations of posing a threat to the so-called “security of the state”.
The court, while siding with the occupation authorities, cited previous FIRs and the so-called “subjective satisfaction” of the detaining authority as justification for the continued incarceration.
Human rights defenders have long decried the PSA as a tool of repression used by Indian authorities to detain Kashmiris without fair trial or due process, often for months or years on end.
Legal experts and rights activists maintain that the use of preventive detention laws like the PSA represents a grave violation of international human rights standards and is part of India’s broader strategy to silence dissent and criminalize political opinion in the occupied territory.
