Mortuza Hussain Choudhary v. The State of Nagaland
Background
Ashraf Hussain Choudhary and his wife Adaliu Chawang were arrested in April 2024 after a joint police search of a vehicle in Nagaland turned up 239 grams of heroin, and a co-accused implicated Adaliu Chawang in earlier drug supply as well. While the couple was still in judicial custody awaiting trial, the Nagaland government invoked preventive detention against them under the 1988 Act, detaining them beyond their ordinary custody so as to pre-empt future drug trafficking. The detenus' brother, Mortuza Hussain Choudhary, challenged the detention orders before the Gauhati High Court, which dismissed the writ petitions, prompting this appeal to the Supreme Court.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that preventive detention is a "draconian" exception to ordinary criminal process and must strictly satisfy the constitutional safeguards in Article 22. It found the detention orders invalid on two independent grounds: first, there was no cogent, non-speculative material showing a real likelihood that the detenus, who had not even applied for bail at the time, would be released on bail and resume trafficking, as required by settled precedent (Kamarunnissa, Rekha, Paul Manickam); and second, the grounds of detention and supporting documents were served only in English and merely orally explained in Nagamese, even though the detenus were not conversant in English, violating the Constitution Bench ruling in Harikisan that a detenu must receive the grounds in a language and script they can actually understand. The Court also faulted the detaining authority for mechanically endorsing the police's proposal instead of independently recording her own "satisfaction" with separate grounds, as the statute requires. It set aside the Gauhati High Court's judgment, quashed the detention orders, and ordered the detenus released forthwith (unless needed in another case).
Lesson Learnt
Preventive detention cannot be used as a backdoor to keep someone locked up once they are already in judicial custody unless the authorities show real, specific evidence that the person is likely to get bail and reoffend, and the detained person must always be given the grounds of detention in a language they actually understand, not just handed English paperwork with a verbal gloss.