Challenge to order of detention on ground of errors in order of detention.

In this petition, under section 491, Criminal Procedure Code, the petitioner, a detenu lodged in the Central Jail, Mysore, complains that he is illegally and improperly detained in Jail. He prays that this Court may be pleased to set him at liberty. This petition was submitted from Jail. After notices to the respondents, it was taken up for hearing on 1st June, 1965. The detenu argued the case in person. After hearing the detenu, as well as the learned Government Pleader we thought that it would be in the interest of justice if the detenu’s case is handled by an Advocate. We accordingly, with the consent of the detenu, requested Sri V.S. Malimath to argue the case for the detenu as amicus curiae. He readily agreed to do so. He presented the detenu’s case clearly and forcibly. He has taken us through all the relevant decisions bearing on the issues arising in the case. We are thankful to him as well as to the learned Advocate-General who appeared for the State at the further hearings of this case, for their useful assistance.

In his petition, the petitioner urged that his detention under clause (b) of sub-rules (1) and (4) of rule 3o of the Defence of India Rules, to be hereinafter referred to as the “Rules” is an illegal detention. According to him, the impugned order is an arbitrary and mala fide order. He urged that the impression of the second respondent that he is a Communist or at any rate a Communist supporter is an erroneous impression; evidently that impression was created by the fact that he happened to print the left Communist Weekly “Aikya Ranga”; but in fact he used to print that paper in the course of his business as a professional printer and he had nothing to do with the Communist Party. He says that he is not a member of the Communist Party of India-rightist or leftist; nor is he a member of any political party in this country; he has not openly or secretly subscribed to any political idealogy; he has not publicly or privately associated himself or supported any movement acquiescing with the Chinese aggression against this country; hence the action of respondents 1 and 2 in ordering his detention is illegal and misconceived; the same has, without justification deprived him of his personal liberty. He challenges respondents 1 and 2 to produce even the slightest proof in support of their view that he is a Communist supporter. He further complains that his detention has imposed unreasonable restrictions on the freedom of his trade and therefore the same is violative of Article 19 of the Constitution. He also complains that a true copy of the order passed by the Deputy Commissioner-cum-Additional District Magistrate, S. Kanara, Mangalore had not been furnished to him either at the time of his arrest on 30th December, 1964, or thereafter.

It is not likely that the petition submitted by the petitioner from jail was drafted by an Advocate. Hence pleas taken therein have not been formulated in a precise manner.

Sri Malimath, in the course of his arguments, did not press many of the contentions taken by the petitioner in his petition. He confined his arguments to six specific questions, namely: (i) the order of detention passed by the second respondent is an invalid order, inasmuch as the same was made without any reasonable basis; (ii) the said order is liable to be struck down as it is a mala fide order; (iii) it is also liable to be struck down as it, under any circumstance, amounts to an undue interference with the ordinary avocations of the petitioner and hence is violative of section 44 of the Defence of India Act, 1962, to be hereinafter referred to as the “Act”; (iv) the order of confirmation made by the State Government is an invalid order as that order purports to have been made on 8th April, 1965, but it was actually signed by one of the Secretaries to the Government on 7th April, 1965; and (v) the impugned order does not show on the face of it that the second respondent was “satisfied” that with a vie