Jammu Kashmir High Court Dismisses Mehbooba Mufti’s PIL on Undertrial Prisoners | Kashmir Life

SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court on December 23 dismissed a public interest litigation filed by PDP president and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti seeking the repatriation of undertrial prisoners from jails outside the Union Territory, holding that the petition was founded on vague averments, lacked material particulars and appeared driven by political considerations rather than genuine public interest.

In a detailed 15-page judgment pronounced by a Division Bench headed by the Chief Justice Justice Arun Palli and Justice Rajnesh Oswal, the court refused to entertain the plea, observing that the extraordinary jurisdiction of public interest litigation could not be invoked based on generalised claims without naming affected persons, challenging specific orders or placing verifiable material on record.

Mufti had approached the court, seeking directions to the Union of India, the Jammu and Kashmir administration, the Director General of Police and the Director General of Prisons to immediately transfer all undertrial prisoners belonging to Jammu and Kashmir, who are presently lodged in prisons outside the Union Territory, back to jails within Jammu and Kashmir. She had further sought that such transfers outside the UT should be allowed only if the authorities demonstrated “unavoidable and compelling necessity”.

Beyond repatriation, the petition also sought an elaborate set of directions, including a mandatory weekly in-person family interview protocol, unrestricted lawyer-client meetings subject to reasonable regulation, monitoring by Legal Services Authorities through quarterly compliance reports, fixing timelines for recording of evidence to avoid delays caused by custody logistics, constitution of a two-member oversight and grievance redressal committee of retired judicial officers, and reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses for one family member per month to visit undertrials lodged outside Jammu and Kashmir.

The court, however, found that the petition did not meet the settled parameters governing public interest litigation. It noted that the petitioner had merely stated that “a lot of family members of undertrials” had approached her, without disclosing their identities, the number of such prisoners, the nature of cases against them or the specific transfer orders under which they were lodged outside the UT.

“There is a complete absence of particulars,” the bench held, pointing out that detention of undertrials outside Jammu and Kashmir is not a blanket or universal practice but is based on individual, case-specific orders issued by competent authorities in the peculiar facts of each case. None of those orders, the court noted, had been challenged before it.

Relying extensively on Supreme Court jurisprudence on the scope and misuse of public interest litigation, including landmark rulings in People’s Union for Democratic Rights vs Union of India, Balwant Singh Chaufal, Dattaraj Nathuji Thaware and State of Jharkhand vs Shiv Shankar Sharma, the High Court underscored that PIL is meant to advance the cause of marginalised and vulnerable sections who are unable to approach courts themselves, not to serve as a vehicle for political mobilisation or publicity.

The bench was particularly critical of what it described as the “political undercurrents” of the petition. Taking note of Mufti’s position as president of a major opposition party in Jammu and Kashmir, the court said it could not ignore the possibility that the litigation was aimed at projecting the petitioner as a “crusader of justice” for a particular constituency and at garnering political advantage.

“Public Interest Litigation cannot be allowed to be utilised as an instrument for advancing partisan or political agendas or transforming the Court into a political platform,” the judgment said, adding that courts cannot serve as forums for electoral campaigns or political leverage.

The judges also referred to the “violent past” of Jammu and Kashmir and the special security circumstances that have often necessitated the transfer of certain undertrials outside the UT. While the petitioner herself had acknowledged that exceptional cases could justify such transfers, the court noted that she had made no effort to identify or detail any specific instances where the transfers were arbitrary or unjustified.

Importantly, the court emphasised that undertrial prisoners have adequate judicial remedies available to them. Any undertrial aggrieved by detention or transfer to a prison outside Jammu and Kashmir can individually approach the competent court to challenge the legality of such an order. The existence of a robust legal aid framework under the Legal Services Authorities Act, monitored by the Supreme Court and the High Court, further weakened the petitioner’s claim of acting on behalf of voiceless prisoners, the bench said.

The absence of even a single undertrial approaching the court through legal aid channels or otherwise was seen as indicative that those detained outside the UT were not genuinely aggrieved, or at least had not chosen to pursue available remedies. In such circumstances, the court held, a political leader could not claim locus standi to espouse their cause through a sweeping PIL.

Calling the demand for omnibus directions legally unsustainable, the bench concluded that a “purely individual grievance about a prisoner’s rights” cannot ordinarily be the subject of a public interest litigation. Since Mufti was, in effect, a third-party stranger to the alleged grievances and had failed to establish bona fide public interest, the petition was dismissed.

While dismissing the plea, the court reiterated that genuine grievances relating to prison conditions and undertrial rights continue to be governed by Supreme Court directions, including those issued in the landmark case on inhuman conditions in prisons. However, it made it clear that such concerns must be raised through appropriate legal channels, rather than through politically motivated litigation masquerading as public interest.