A preventive detention order can be set aside if the order and the supporting documents supplied to family members of the detainee in their mother tongue do not turn out to be the exact replica of the English records, the Madras High Court Bench here has ruled.
Allowing a habeas corpus petition (HCP) filed by a 70-year-old woman challenging the detention of her son, Justices S. Manikumar and V.S. Ravi said that even a small discrepancy in translation would affect the detainee’s right to make an effective representation to the authorities concerned. The High Court’s order is significant in the light of the latest amendments to the Goondas Act.
Legal experts, human rights activists and leaders of almost all political parties said the amendments were anti-democratic and liable to be misused by the ruling party to “settle political scores.”
The Judges agreed with the petitioner, R. Pandiammal’s contention that the order passed by the Madurai Police Commissioner on October 9, 2013, detaining her son Nadungi Murugan (33) under the Goondas Act was liable to be quashed solely in view of discrepancies in translated documents.
The Division Bench stated that the Police Commissioner had invoked the detention law against the petitioner’s son on the basis of three cases booked against him at the Subramaniapuram police station in the city limits.
The police argued that there was an imminent possibility of the petitioner’s son being enlarged on bail since he had filed a bail application in one of the three cases, and therefore it was necessary to detain him under the Goondas Act in order to maintain public order. Though the English version of a document in a booklet supplied to the petitioner contained the number of the bail application supposedly filed by her son in a lower court, the translated Tamil version of the same document did not mention any such number.
“In such circumstances, the petitioner has rightly pointed out that the discrepancy in the said translation has clearly established non-application of mind on the part of the detaining authority while passing the detention order,” the Judges said.
They also pointed out that in a counter-affidavit filed in reply to the present HCP, the Police Commissioner had mentioned the name of the detainee’s father as R. Pandi in one of the paragraphs and as Rajamani Thevar in another paragraph.
