Judgement

HIDDAYATULLAH C.J.I. : These are five writ petitions under Article 32 of the Constitution of India by persons detained under the Preventive Detention Act (4 of 1950) by virtue of orders passed by the District Magistrate Tripura on February 2, 1968. These detenus (and another since released) were arrested on February 11, 1968. State Government was informed of the fact of detention on February 13, and the grounds of detention were communicated to the detenus on February 15. State Government gave the approval on February 19 and telegraphically communicated to the Central Government the fact of the detention on February 22 under Section 3 (4). On March 11, the Advisory Board considered the cases. The present petitions were filed on March 12, 1968. The Advisory Board made its report to the State Government under Section 10 of the Act on April 17, 1968. On April 26, 1968, the State Government made the order detaining the petitioners for a period of one year. This detention is challenged before us.

2. The petitions were argued by Mr. Ramamurthy together. The law points raised by him in these cases were common an will be dealt with together. Part of the facts were also common although some special features were pointed out in some cases. We propose to deal with the common points of law and facts together and then to consider the special facts separately.

3. The points of law were (1) that the detention was illegal as the report of the District Magistrate was not submitted forthwith as required by section 3 (3) of the Act, (2) that the detention was again illegal as the order of the approval of State Government under Section 3 (3) was not communicated to the petitioners, (3) that the detention was illegal as the State Government had not reported the fact to the Central Government as soon as possible and without avoidable delay. The common points of fact are that the founds were vague and the detention was or a collateral purpose and mala fide.

4. The order of detention in each case was made on the 9th February. The arrest and detention commenced from the 11th. The communication was on February 13. Section 3 (3) of the Act lays down:

"3. (1) The Central Government or the State Government may

(a) * * * * * * *

(3) When any order is made under this Section [by an officer mentioned in sub-section (2)] he shall forthwith report the fact to the State Government to which he is subordinate together with the grounds on which the order has been made and such other particulars as in his opinion [have a bearing on the matter, and no such order made after the commencement of the Preventive Detention (Second Amendment) Act, 1952, shall remain in force for more than twelve days after making thereof unless in the meantime it has been approved by State Government]."

The question is whether the detention became illegal because 4 days were allowed to pass from the order of detention and 2 days from the date of arrest. The third sub-section quoted above uses the word forthwith . Explaining this word Max-well in Interpretation of Statutes (Eleventh Edn.) at p. 341 observes as follows:

"When a statute requires that something shall be done "forthwith" or "immediately" or even "instantly", it should probably be understood as allowing a reasonable time for doing it."

The word forthwith in Section 3 (3) and the phrase as soon as may be used in the fourth sub-section were considered in Keshav Nilkanth Joglekar v. Commissioner of Police, Greater Bombay, 1956 SCR 653 at pp. 658-660. In that case the delay was of 8 days. Giving proper meaning to the expression it was observed:

"We agree that forthwith in Sec. 3 (3) cannot mean the same thing as as soon as may be in Section 7, and that the former is mare peremptory than the latter. The difference between the two expressions lies, in our opinion, in this that while under Section 7 the time that is allowed to the authority to send the communication to the detenu is what is reasonably convenient, under Sectio