Case: Bhupal Chandra Ghosh Vs. Arif Ali And Others

1. It is a petition for a 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 living 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 with S. 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.2. The petition was 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. The reasons in support of the order are now set forth in this judgment.3. The District Magistrate has detained the petitioner with a 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 relevance 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 areThat he spoke ill of the State Government, and the Assamese people in a camera meeting in the last part of March, 1961 held at the residence of Shri Hemandra Kishore Roy, Jorhat. Then he was Secretary of the Refugee Association, Assam.(3) That he issued a Press Statement onon the Pak atrocities in East Pakistan (Bengla Desh) blaming General Yahaya Khan and the American Government. Another telegram was sent onto 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 a telegram onto 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 exaggerated telegram onto the Prime Minister, India requesting her not to enter into any language settlement with Cachar leaders. He signed the telegram as the Councils acting President.Counsel for the respondent could not satisfy us as to how any one of these five grounds could have a rational connection with public order. Some of them may perhaps have some connection with "law and order". But it has been held in a 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 now shown to have any rational relation with public order. In other words,of the grounds are irrelevant. The detention order is based on the subjective satisfaction of the detaining authority. Accordingly we cannot assess how far these five grounds have swayed the mind of the District Magistrate and titled his judgment against the detenu. To the intertwining of relevant and irrelevant grounds of detention the rule of severality would not apply, and the whole order of detention will fall down.

Court's reasoning:
There is yet another aspect which we cannot overlook. As already stated, the detention order is passed in order to prevent the petitioner from acting in any manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order Professedly, it is not made with a view to preventing him from acting prejudicially to the security of the State. But in the grounds of detention the District Magistrate specifically relies on security of State. He says: "the above prejudicial activities...and the sinister design of dislodging the present administration and hate Assamese campaign has posed a serious threat to the security of the State and the maintenance of public order in the District of Sibasagar. Grounds Nos. 4, 8, 9 and 16 are indeed connected with the security of the State.6. A conjoint reading of the detention order and the grounds of detention 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 time 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 order on them. In the first event, he cannot now seek to buttress his detention order by those grounds, because the detention order is made for the maintenance of public order only; in the second event also, those grounds should be totally ignored. 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 public order and security of the State. Every breach of public order will not necessarily affect the security of the State.It will follow from these observations that the detention order in the present case cannot be upheld on the basis of the remaining grounds, as we have taken the view that five of the grounds serviced on the detenu have got no rational connection with maintenance of public order.