BHOPAL CHANDRA GHOSH versus ARIF ALI AND OTHERS

BHOPAL CHANDRA GHOSH

ARIF ALI AND OTHERS

November 15, 1973

[S. N. DWIVEDI, Y. v. CHANDRACHUD AND P. K. Gosw~; JJ.].

Ataintenance of Internal Securiiy Act, 1971-S. 3(2) read ·;,;iJJI 's'e~tt~'n. ; 3, 1) (a) (ii)-"Maintena11ce of Public Order"-Some of the growuU have M rela· lion to public order-Order of detention if vitiated. . ·

fhe p~titioner was detained under s. 3(2) read with a. 3(1)(~)(;.i)··~f·-·tho ·

A.faintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971 with. view to preventhia him from. actin& in any manner prejudicial to the ''maintenance of public order"'.- ln one of the grounds it was stated that the petitioner .. posed _a serious threat to the security of the State and the maintenance of public order:• The·DCtitioner con• tended that the order of detention was bad· because some of the grounds had no relevance to public order. · · .

Allowing the petition,

. HELD: (1) The order of detention· was invalid. Five out of ·16 grolHld.1 .are not shown to have any rational relation with public ordet. SO.Dlcl of them may perhaps have some connection with "law and order". But it has been.held in series of decisions of this Court that the concept of law and order is DOt identical with the concept of public Order. ·Public order is an aggravated form of disturbance of public peace. It affects the general current of public life. The detention order was passed on the subjective satisfaction of the . detaitllng authority and it was not possible to assess how far these five. grounds bad swayed the mind of the District ]..fagistrate and tilted ·his judgment against the detenu. To the intertwinin% of relevant and irrelevant .erounds of detention the rule of severalty would not apply and the whole order of detention would fall down. [279B.C)

State of Bomba.Y v. Atma Ram Sridluzr Vaidya [1951] S.C.R. 167, distin~ &Uished ..

(2) The detention order was passed in order to prevent the petitioner from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order. It was not made with view to preventing him from acting prejudicially to the aecmity of the State. But in the grounds of detention the District Magistrate ~pecitlcally relied on security of State, conjoint reading of the detention order· and the grounds of detention was suggestive of the inference that the District :h.iagistrate had either· no information of the grounds relevant to the .security of the State at the time of jthe passin&' of the detention order, or tha4 it he had illf'ormation of those grounds, he did not believe them to be factually correct and accord-·: ingly did not bottom· bis detention order on the..m. In the first event. he could not now seek [1]to buttress his detention order by those grounds, becausQ the detention order was made for the maintenance of public order only; in the aecond event also, those ,trounds &bould be totally ignored. If he did not think lt proper to rely on them while making the detention order, he could not deploy them at later date as another string to the bow. There is difference between public order and security of the State. Every breach of public_ order will not neces· sarily atrect the security of the State. [279F-G] ·

· Dr. Ram J.,fanohar Lohia v. State of Bihar, [19'6] 1 S.C.R. -109 at· page 746, Shibhan La.I Saxena v. The State c: Uttar Prtuksh, (1954) S.C.R. 411, at p. 422, Motilal Jain v. State of Bihtir, [1968] 3 S.C.R. 587 . at p. '$93 Pushkar Mukherjee v. The State of West Bengal, [1969) 2 S.C.R. 635 A.nan.ta Mukhl & Ananta Hari .v. State of West Bengal, [1972} 3 S.C.R. 379 and Masood Alam v. Union of India, A.l.R. 1973 S.C. 897, refemd to.

.... ORIGINAL WR.tr JURISDICTION : Writ Petition No. 1520 of 1973.: .

.. Under Article 32 of the cOOstitution for issue of Writ in the nature, ' . ,of bahcas corp~· '

D. N. Mukherji and Rathin Das for the petitioner.

S. N. Chaudhury, for the respondents.

The Judgment of the Court was delivered by

DWIVEDI, J. It is petition for writ in the nature of habeas corpus under Art. 32 of the Constitution. The petitioner alleges that he.is the acting President of the Council of the Displaced Bengalees hvmg in the State of Assam .. On April 2, 1973, the District Magistrate Sibasagar, Jorhat, in the said State, passed an order under s. 3(2) read withs. 3(1) (a)(ii) of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, 1971 for detaining the petitioner in the Jorhat jail. Accordingly, he was so detained. On April 3, 1973 the District Magistrate served the grounds of detention on him. The State Government approved the order of detention.

The petition wa3 heard by us on October 30, 1973. After hearing counsel for the parties we were of opinion that the petition should be allowed. Accordingly, we passed an order directing the release of the petitioner. Th·o reasons in support of the order are now set forth in this judgrne11t.

The District Magistrate has detained the petitioner with ·view to preventing him from acting in any manner prejudicial to "maintenance of public order." The sole argument before us is that some of the grounds served on him by the District Magistrate have got no rele-vance to public order. Grounds of detention are 16 in number. Some of the grounds do relate to public order, and it is not necessary to set them out here. We shall mention only such grounds as, in our opinion, have no relevance to public order. Those grounds are : ·

"(2) That he spoke ill of the State Government, and the Assamese people in camera meeting in the last part of March, 1961 held at the residence of Shri Hemen-dra Ki shore Roy, J'orhat. Then he was Secretary of the Refugee Association, Assam. ·

(3) That he issued Press Statement on 6-12-1971 on the Pak atrocities in East Pakistan (Bangla Desh) blaming General Yahaya Khan and the American Government. Another telegram was sent on 22-11-71 to Mr. Kenneth Keating, American Ambassador in India, to. stop mass killing in East Pakistan.

( 6) That he challenged the census operation in Assam and stated that the figures of Assamese population were shown highly inflated at the cost of Bengalis. (11) That he sent telegram on 10-10-1972 to the Prime Minister India on the language movement in Assam. ' The contents of the telegram were highly exaggerated and false. ( 12) That he sent another ex~erated telegram on 31-12-1972 to the Prime Mintster, India requesti?g her not to enter into any laJliuage settlemem w11h

JI. c. GHOSH v. ARIF ALI (Dwivedi, J.)

Cachar leaders. He signed the telegram as the Coun-cil's actini: President."

Counsel for the respondent could not satisfy us as to how a11y one of these five grounds could have rational connection with public order. Some of them may perhaJ?S have some connection with '"law and order". But it has been held m series of decisions· of this Court that the concept of law and order is not identical with the concept of public order. Public order is an aggravated form of disturbance of public ,peace; It affects the general current of public life. In the result, five out of 16· grounds are not shown to have any rational relation with . public order. In other words, one third of the grounds are irrelevant. The detention order is based on the subjective satisfaction of the de-taining authority. Accordingly we cannot assess how far these five grounds have swayed the mind of the District Magistrate and tilted his judgment against' the detenu. To the intertw.ining of relevant and irrelevant grounds of detention the rule of severalty would not apply, and the whole order of detention will fall down.There is yet another aspect which we cannot overloo)<. As already stated, the detention order is passed in order to prevent tho petitioner from actin11 in any mann~r prejudicial to the maintenance of public order. Professedly, it is not made with view to preventing hii:n from actin& prejudicially to the security of the State. But in . the grounds of detention, the District Ma&istrate specifically relies on 11ecurity ef State. He says : '-'the above prejudicial activities .......... and the sinister design of dislodging the present administration and hate Assamese campaign has, posed serious threat to the se<:urity of the State and the maintenance of public order in the District of Siba· sagar." Grounds Nos. 4, 8, 9 and 16 are indeed connected with the security of the State.

conjoint reading of the detention order. and the grounds of detenc !ion is suggestive of the inference that the District Magistrate had either no information of the grounds relevant to the security of the State at the tinte of the passing of the detention order, or that, if .he had information of those grounds, he did not believe them to be factually correct and accordingly did not bottom his . detention o~dcr on them. In the first event, he cannot now seel< to buttress bis deten· tion order by those grounds, because the detention order is made for the maintenance of public order only; in the second event also, t]\ose grounds should be totally ign0red. If he did not think it proper to rely on them while making the detention order, he cannot deploy them now as another string to the bow. There is difference between pub1ic order and security of the State. Every breach of public order will not necessarily affect the security of the State.

In Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia v. State of Bihar([1]) Hidayatullah J. has expressed this dit'lerence thus : ff "One has to imagine three concentric circles. Law ·and order represents the largest circle within whi.cb is the next ___:irclo representing public order and the smaliest circle re-

(l)t\966] I S.C.R. 709 at Pait 74'.

6-522 SCJ/14

In Ananta Mll}chi @ Anania Hari v. State of West Be111al,(I) -this Court held by majority-that the grounds of detention were relevant_ to the maintenance of public order and security of the State.

In Masood Alam v. Union of India,(') the detenu's argume,nt wu that the ·grounds of detention were itrelevant to the maintenance of public order and security of the State. But the Court did not accept the contention.

As result of the foregoing discussion, we are of opinion that the order of detention is invalid and cannot stand.

Tlie petition is accordingly allowed.

(: P.B.R.

Petition allowed,