ORDER :

[N. Anand Venkatesh, J.]

[PRAYER: Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India to issue a Writ of Habeas Corpus, calling for the entire records connected with the detention order passed in M.H.S.Confdl.No.85 of 2022 dated 19.09.2022 on the file of the second respondent herein and quash the same and direct the respondents to produce the body or person of the petitioner’s husband, namely, Jeyaraman, S/o. Kanagamani, aged about 58 years, now detained at the Central Prison, Palayamkottai, before this Court and set him at liberty forthwith.]

[PRAYER: Petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India to issue a Writ of Habeas Corpus, calling for the entire records connected with the detention order passed in Detention Order No.54/2022 dated 23.06.2022 on the file of the second respondent herein and quash the same and direct the respondents to produce the body or person of the detenu, namely, Soundarrajan, S/o. Karuppasamy, aged about 27 years, now detained at the Central Prison, Madurai, before this Court and set him at liberty forthwith.]

Introduction

1. Of all the things a system should fear, Complacency heads the list. The case on hand gave us a wake-up call and made us question ourselves as to whether we have become complacent and conditioned while dealing with preventive detention cases. Having got that call from within, we decided to shake up and wriggle out of the complacency and do a reality check.

Prelude

Preventive detention, commonly alluded to as the jurisdiction of suspicion, is constitutionally tolerated under Article 22(4) of the Constitution of India. It hardly requires any reiteration that preventive detention is essentially a freckle on the Constitutional canvas, and as Patanjali Sastri, J. reminds us, “This sinister looking feature, so strangely out of place in a democratic Constitution which invests personal liberty with the sacrosanctity of a fundamental right and so incompatible with the premises of its Preamble is doubtless designed to prevent an abuse of freedom by anti-social and subversive elements which might imperil the national welfare of the infant Republic.”

2. It is our common experience on Bench handling habeas corpus matters that scores of habeas corpus petitions are filed every day before the Principal seat as well the Madurai Bench, challenging the orders of detention passed under Act 14 of 1982. These petitions are admitted and are taken up after about 4-6 six months, owing to the existing backlog of cases, and are inevitably allowed directing the release of the detenues.

3. During the hearing of these cases, we thought it fit to have a look at the “Prison Statistics India Report 2021” of the National Crime Records Bureau of the Ministry of Home Affairs. At page-xiii of the said report, the following conclusion is found:

“Tamil Nadu has reported the maximum number of detenues (51.2%, 1,775) in the country followed by Telangana (11.4%, 396) and Gujarat (10.7%, 372) at the end of 2021”.

4. Our curiosity having been kindled, we decided to examine the previous Prison Statistics India Reports which are freely available on the website of the National Crime Records Bureau, to examine the position in the previous years. We notice that the term “detenue” has been defined in the relevant glossary in the Prison Statistics in India Report to mean “Any person detained in prison on the orders of the competent authority under the relevant preventive laws”.

5. Much to our dismay and disbelief, we found the following observations in the Prison Statistics in India Reports from 2011 to 2021: