New Delhi: Nine acquittals, one discharge and criminal proceedings stretching back nearly a decade were among the material relied upon by the Assam government to justify social and land-rights activist Pranab Doley’s preventive detention under the National Security Act (NSA). But the Gauhati High Court found that it had relied on stale criminal cases, failed to disclose crucial outcomes of earlier prosecutions and invoked foreign travel and financial transactions without sufficiently connecting them to the alleged prejudicial activities.
A Division Bench of Justices Kalyan Rai Surana and Susmita P. Khaund had said Friday that the authorities effectively adopted a “short cut” by invoking preventive detention instead of pursuing remedies available under ordinary criminal law.
Quashing the 30 July detention order, the High Court found a lack of “application of mind” by the detaining authority on whether ordinary laws were insufficient to deal with Doley’s alleged activities before resorting to preventive detention.
It also said the authority had “turned its blind eye” by failing to ascertain the status of the criminal cases relied upon.
The immediate backdrop to the detention was Doley’s involvement in protests over land, livelihood and development around Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve in Assam.
In October 2023, he participated in a protest against the proposed inclusion of several villages within Kaziranga. Residents were opposing displacement and demanded that any relocation be accompanied by lawful compensation and rehabilitation.
The dispute intensified in June 2026 over the construction of a proposed luxury Hyatt hotel and a separate Tea Tribes Museum. The hotel project, being developed on land allotted to the Assam Tourism Development Corporation, faced opposition from indigenous farming families claiming rights over the land.
Doley, identified by the State as the organising secretary of the Kaziranga Bhoomi Suraksha Committee, was among those opposing the projects.
A 28 June protest led to a confrontation with police. The State alleged that protesters forcibly entered the project site, removed survey markings and clashed with police personnel. The resulting criminal case was still under investigation when the preventive detention order was passed.
But the State’s case for detention went considerably beyond the Kaziranga episode. Its dossier reached back to 2017 and relied on 13 criminal cases, along with police and intelligence reports documenting Doley’s participation in protests.
It was this wider history, combining the Kaziranga agitations with earlier criminal cases and other protests, that the Assam government relied upon when it placed him under preventive detention on 30 July under Section 3(2) of the National Security Act, saying his activities were prejudicial to public order and the security of the State.
Doley was arrested on 12 July, before the NSA detention order was issued on 30 July.
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Nine acquittals and ‘malice in law’
Of the 13 criminal cases cited against Doley, the High Court recorded that he had been acquitted in nine and discharged in one. Of the three remaining proceedings, one had been stayed by the High Court, one was under investigation and another was at the evidence stage. Yet, the detention grounds did not disclose the acquittals and the discharge.
The High Court held that the absence of “complete and full disclosure” of the status of the criminal cases vitiated the detention order on account of “malice in law”.
It was in this context that the bench said reliance on stale cases, including those ending in acquittal or discharge, led to the inference that the authorities “adopted a short cut to detain the petitioner” rather than follow due process by challenging those orders.
The High Court also found the allegations against him “vague and bereft of material particulars”, leaving him without sufficient information to understand the specific accusations against him.
What was the ‘live nexus’?
The High Court separately scrutinised the attempt to rely on Doley’s 14 foreign visits between 2017 and 2026 and foreign remittances received in his accounts.
It found no material linking the visits to anti-India activity or threats to national security or his protest activities. “Repetitive foreign visit, by itself,” the High Court said, could not justify preventive detention, while also finding no “live nexus” between the remittances and the protests preceding his arrest.
Another defect concerned his second, detailed challenge to the detention, submitted after he obtained legal assistance. The High Court found that it was not forwarded to the authorities required to consider it, a lapse it held was “fatal to the continued preventive detention”.
Ultimately, the bench identified four defects sufficient to bring down the NSA order: reliance on stale criminal cases, non-furnishing of relevant documents, non-consideration of the second representation, and reliance on foreign travel and remittances lacking a proximate connection with the alleged threat.
The judgment underscored the limits of preventive detention as an extraordinary power. Such detention cannot substitute the ordinary process of law and must rest on due application of mind and a proximate link between the grounds relied upon and the purpose for which detention is sought.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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