Pritam Singh and Another vs State

Chopra, J.—Mohinder Singh, son of Amar Singh Sodhi, of Village Rogla, Police Station Dirba, was arrested & ordered to be detained for a period ending on 31-3-1951 under Sub-section (2) of Section 3 of the Preventive Detention Act by the order of the District Mag. Sangrur, dated 5-8-1950. A petn. No. 16 to this Ct. for his release u/s 491, Code of Criminal Procedure was made by Pritam Singh & Anr. No. 17 by the detenu himself was received through Jail.

The only point argued by S. Tirath Singh, the learned Counsel for the petnr. (by which will be meant the detenu Mohinder Singh), is that the grounds of detention communicated to the detenu wore vague & indefinite & that they were not sufficient to enable the petnr. to make an effective representation to the Govt. It is, therefore, contended that further detention of the petnr. is illegal. The grounds supplied are as follows:

You. are an active believer in the cult of violence. You have been indulging in the propagation of class hatred & disaffection against the Govt. established by law.

You have been preaching the above mentioned cult of violence in the general public along with other underground communist workers namely Partap Singh ''Baghi'' of village Jakhepal, Santa Singh Pandhi of Dirbha, Sahib Singh of Salana, Giani Jaswant Singh of Talwandi now at Sangrur, Kaur Singh of village Mauran, Inder Singh carpenter of village Mehlan & Bahadur Singh & Ram Singh of village Harigarh etc, in the villages of Shafipur, Dhandoli, Rogla, Bhutgarh, Jakhepal, Naraingarh, Kulburchha, Chhajli, Bigarwal, etc. Especially you have been inciting the tenants in these villages to retain forcible possession of the land belonging to the Biswedars at all coats against the provisions of law & also not to pay the due share of Batai to them.

The above mentioned facts are also clearly corroborated from your remaining a proclaimed offender after the issue of your detention warrants & also from the recovery of Communist literature inciting to violence from your possession at the time of your arrest.

Your remaining at liberty is prejudicial to the maintenance of security & public order & therefore, your detention has been ordered to ensure such security & public order.

It is stressed that none of these grounds can be regarded as a good ground under the Act & since they are not supported by particular facts or information on which the assertions are based they did not supply enough material to enable the petnr. to impress on the Govt. that the assertions were unfounded. The learned Advocate-General while conceding that ground No. 1 is rather vague & No. 4 merely reiterates the satisfaction of the detaining authority that the detention was necessary for the security of the State & maintenance of public order, contends that the other two grounds were quite precise & definite, acting on which it was within the powers of the District Mag. to order detention of the petnr.

As regards ground No. 2 the objection taken is that it does not give the dates or even the approximate time when the petnr. was alleged to have visited the villages mentioned therein & preached his cult of violence & incited the tenants of those villages to retain forcible possession of lands of the Biswedars. The argument is that the material supplied without further telling the time to which it relates was not sufficient to enable the petnr. to make any effective representation showing that the assertions were baseless. The counsel has not been able to cite any authority in which a ground supplied to a detenu was held to be vague merely because the time of the objectionable activities was not disclosed. In my view it is not always necessary that the time of a particular activity must also be given in order to make a ground explicit, if otherwise it is clear enough to make the detenu understand what is being complained against him. The question what information would be sufficient to enable the detenu to make a proper representation has to be decided with reference to the facts of each case & it cannot be held as a general rule that without specification of time of the activities the ground would always be consd. to be vague & indefinite. The object of supplying grounds of detention to a person ordered to be detained is to enable him to make an effective representation. The law does not require that all the facts on which the ground is based must be disclosed, it rather makes a clear distinction between the grounds on which the order of detention is made & the particulars on which the grounds are based. The purpose of the Act would be served if the grounds make it clear to the detenu what he is charged with & why he has been detained. Now in this case in ground No. 2 it is stated that the detenu was preaching violence, in which he himself believed, to the inhabitants of certain villages nine of which were particularly named, & was inciting them to retain possession of lands of the Biswedars by resisting processes of law by use of force. The matters preached, the incitement caused & the field of his subversive activities are all described. To make the allegation more clear to the detenu the names of eight of his co-workers in those villages, who were underground communists, were also mentioned. In view of the particulars supplied, it cannot be said that the ground defeats the object for which grounds are supplied because it does not give the exact date or time when the detenu visited a particular village I do not find much substance in the argument that the acts complained of might have related to a period in the long past say ten years or even more before the order was made. The language used & the facts stated must have made it clear to detenu that the activities related to a period not long before the order was made.

In Machindar Shivaji v. The King AIR 1950 F.C. 129 , the ground communicated to the detenu was that he was working for the Communist Party of India which was spreading its doctrine of viclence in different parts of the country, & that he was assisting & associating with a named prominent member of the Party who had gone under-ground. The ground was held to be good enough to satisfy the detaining authority that the detenu was likely to act in a manner prejudicial to the public safety. A F.B. of the Bombay H.C. In Re: Rajdhar Kalu Patil, consd. the ground "that you threaten public peace & tranquillity of the Amalner town by using violent methods" to be precise & accurate. A recent decision of a D.B. of the Assam H.C. Dimbeswar Hazarika v. The State AIR 1951 Asm. 29 is Anr. case in point. The ground of detention furnished to the detenu in that case was the following:

He has been secretly holding camera meetings & propagating Communist ideologies among the villagers & students of Sootia & its neighbouring places with a view to incite & lead them into unconstitutional action calculated to disrupt the present order by violent means.

It was held there that the ground contained sufficient particulars to justify an order of detention. No time of the subversive activities of the detenus in the cases refd. to above was given & yet the ground was consd. to be sufficiently definite & precise.

The learned Counsel for the petnr. has drawn my attention to a recent D.B. decision of this Ct. in which the learned Chief Justice found the detention to be illegal because the grounds supplied to the detenu'' were not precise & sufficient to enable him to make an effective representation. This was in Criminal Misc. No. 8 of 1950, Tilak Ram v. State, The order of detention was made u/s 3, Sub-section (1) for the maintenance of supplies & services essential to the community & the following were the grounds supplied to the detenu:

That your firm is notorious for dealing in black-marketing in essential commodities such as grains & gur;

Prominent citizens of Bhatinda belonging to all sections of the community have come forward to complain against your anti social activities. As a result thereof it has transpired that you have been refusing to sell essential commodities such as grain & gur without charging black-market price over & above the controlled prion.

Ground No. 1 was held to be vague because it was absolutely silent about the reason on which the belief was based & the second was consd. to be a bald statement which neither gave the names of the complainants nor the activities to which the complaints related. The grounds in the present case, however, are quite different & the observations made by the learned Chief Justice which related to the particular grounds of that case have no application here, Reference has also been made to my judgment in Cr. Misc. Appln. No. 65 of 1950 Gurbax Singh v. State, in which the ground under discussion was as follows:

That you have been a Communist Party worker & were engaged an such on the Labour Front for organising them & preparing them to lodge a large scale & violent struggle against the Govt.

As regards the first part of the ground it was held that a person could not be detained merely because he was a member of the Communist Party, & the second part was found to be vague because it did not mention the time or place when, where & in what manner the detenu organised the labour class to start violent struggle against the Govt. It was further observed that in every case it was not necessary for the detaining authority to give the exact time or place of the subversive activities of the detenu if the ground otherwise gives such material as to enable him to refute the allegations made against him & to make an effective representation. For all these reasons I am of opinion that ground No. 2 in the present case does not suffer from the defect of being vague or indefinite.

Ground No. 3 is given simply to supplement what was stated in the preceding ground. Taken by itself it does not convey anything & can not be consd. to be sufficient. The literature recovered from the detenu at the time of his arrest has not been produced, nor the fact that the detenu could not be arrested on the warrants previously issued would suffice to show that his activities were in any way prejudicial to the maintenance of public order.

As ground No. 2 has been held to be quite precise & definite & it is not said to be beyond the scope of the Act the detention cannot be consd. illegal.

In the result the petns. are dismissed.