“The process was made the punishment.”
When the Supreme Court used those words to quash businessman and November 2024 Sambhal violence-accused Mulla Afroz's preventive detention under the National Security Act (NSA) on 29 September 2026, the detention order was already approaching its expiry. The Court directed his release, unless required in another case, and imposed Rs 10 lakh in costs on the Uttar Pradesh government, payable to him.
The ruling, however, is critical as it vindicates an important constitutional protection. It also exposes its practical limits.
Afroz succeeded in establishing that the order keeping him detained was unlawful, but much of the confinement imposed under that order had already occurred. So what/whom did the safeguards surrounding preventive detention protect during that period?
This question does not diminish the Supreme Court’s intervention. It asks us to examine the distance between correcting an unlawful exercise of power and protecting a person against its consequences.
In Afroz’s case, the order survived administrative review and the High Court’s scrutiny before the Supreme Court found its supporting grounds unsustainable.
Preventive detention permits imprisonment without a conviction. That makes scrutiny of its justification especially important: the safeguards must test the State’s reasons while they can still protect the person detained.