The Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has drawn a sharp line on preventive detention—what matters is not how many offences one racks up, but the gravity of their impact.
This came while the Court upheld the detention of a Rajouri resident, accused of being a serial player in the narcotics trade. His wife had filed a habeas corpus petition, arguing that the order keeping him behind bars was mechanical and unconstitutional. The bench was not persuaded.
Justice MA Chowdhary made it clear: “It is not the number of acts … but the impact of the act which is material and determinative.” And in this case, the impact was devastating. Drug trafficking, the Court noted, isn’t just about banned substances—it’s a silent assault on society, pushing vulnerable youth, particularly the unemployed, down paths that can’t easily be undone.
The man at the heart of the case, Mohd Shakoor, had five NDPS cases to his name since 2012, though he had secured bail in each. His preventive detention came through an order from the Divisional Commissioner, Jammu, in November 2024. His counsel argued that bail made further detention unnecessary. The Court disagreed, underscoring that preventive detention is a shield, not a punishment—an instrument to halt offenders before irreparable damage is done.
The ruling also carried a broader warning: drug trafficking doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It bleeds into larger networks of organised crime, arms smuggling, money laundering, and even terrorism. The Court cautioned that narco-terrorism threatens not just communities but national sovereignty itself.
Calling the drug menace a “serious threat to public health, economy and the growth of humanity,” the bench pointed to its corrosive effect on the social fabric, where small crimes and larger ones alike can be traced back to the narcotics trade.
With that, the petition was dismissed, and Shakoor’s preventive detention was allowed to stand.
