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Srinagar: The Jammu and Kashmir high court quashed the preventive detention of a man booked under the Public Safety Act (PSA), 1978, for possessing literature banned by the administration. The court said in its order that mere possession of books with “dispiriting titles” does not by itself make a person a criminal to be booked under the stringent law.

Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi, while hearing a petition on September 3, directed the authorities to release the detained man, Shafat Maqbool Wani, immediately. The petition was filed on Wani’s behalf by his uncle.

The court found that Wani’s detention order issued by the district magistrate of Kupwara suffered from non-application of mind and had wrongly attributed the authorship of certain books to him. These books, which authorities called anti-national literature, were seized from Wani’s residence.

Police had claimed that the books titled Construction of an Islamic Order in Hindutva Reimagination and The Saffronisation of Occupied Kashmir: Demystifying Hindutva Settlers, Colonial Designers were seized from Wani’s house. They had alleged that the seized literature promoted separatist ideology.

It is pertinent to mention that on August 5, 2025, the J&K Home Department banned the publication and........

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