On Friday, the Supreme Court stayed a detention order passed under the stringent National Security Act (NSA) against an Uttar Pradesh man accused of cow slaughter.
A bench headed by Justice R F Nariman also issued a notice on the plea by Mehboob Ali, said his counsel Narveer Dabas.
Ali said in the plea that the “stringent provisions of the National Security Act, 1980 providing for preventive detention have been invoked against” him “in a most arbitrary, discriminatory & malafide manner, & in utter violation of the Fundamental Rights enshrined in Article 21 & 22 of the Constitution of India”.
He contended that the detention order was passed on January 14, 2019 “on a mere apprehension that the petitioner may act in a manner prejudicial to maintenance of public order. The basis of such apprehension is the alleged involvement of the petitioner in two alleged cases of cow-slaughter & the ‘apprehension’ of the petitioner being released on bail in the said two cases”.
Dabas said the petitioner had not been named in either of the FIRs connected with the cow slaughter & had been granted bail in the cases.
According to his plea he “has never been involved in any case which has any nexus with the maintenance of public order nor has he ever been involved in any heinous offence”.
He said the grounds cited in support of the detention order “fail to disclose or even allege any nexus of the petitioner with the incident of mob violence that had occurred on 03.12.2018 leading to registration of a criminal case”.
The detention order had been challenged by the petitioner before the Allahabad High Court, but the plea was dismissed.
