No respite
J&K High Court recently dismissed a petition seeking the release of High Court Bar Association President Mian Abdul Qayoom, asking if the detainee had shunned his separatist ideology. This was for the first time that the court has discussed ideology of a detained person for his release.
The divisional bench of the High Court comprising Vinod Chatterjee Koul and Ali Mohammad Magray observed that advocate general has submitted “the ideology nourished and nurtured by the detainee cannot be confined or limited to time qualify it to be called stale or fresh, unless of course, the person concerned declares and establishes by conduct and expression that he has shunned the ideology.”
The division bench, then, concluded, in the light of these “legally rightful and sound argument” taken by the advocate general, “we leave it to the detenue to decide whether he would wish to take advantage of the stand of the advocate general and make a representation to the concerned authorities to abide by it.” Court has left an opening for the detained President of Kashmir Bar Association to make a representation to the court to say that whatever the government has submitted about his grounds of detention including his ideology was wrong.
In such an atmosphere, Mian Abdul Qayoom who is still detained could not get any respite from the court despite the fact that he was ailing and has been kept in the jails outside Jammu and Kashmir. It would be various curious to know whether the lawyers of Qayoom will go for the legal remedy further or they will not approach the court now.
