SRINAGAR: Mere possession of books with “dispiriting titles” does not make a person a criminal, the Jammu & Kashmir high court said, quashing an order for preventive detention of a man under the Public Safety Act (PSA) on charges of keeping and authoring books promoting separatist ideology.A single bench of Justice Moksha Khajuria Kazmi Thursday also observed that the PSA detention order passed by Kupwara district magistrate against the petitioner, Shafat Maqbool Wani, wrongly attributed to him the authorship of alleged anti-national literature seized from his house.Being a scholar, the petitioner could be expected to possess a variety of literary material, the court said, directing police to release Wani forthwith.Police claimed to have seized books with what they alleged were incriminating titles — ‘Construction of an Islamic Order in Hindutva Reimagination’ and ‘The Saffronization of occupied Kashmir, Demystifing Hindutva Settlers, Colonial Designers’ —from Wani’s house. They also attributed the authorship of the books to Wani.The court said the assertion that the detainee had inculcated a separatist ideology since his childhood as his father has been an ex-militant was “delusory”. “…The preventive detention, ordered so conveniently on such imaginary belief, is nothing but an unmindful exercise of power,” it observed.Justice Kazmi noted that the respondents had not shown any subversive activity against the petitioner that compelled them to take recourse to preventive detention.
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The HC ruling assumes significance as the home department banned the publication and circulation of 25 books on Kashmir, saying they promoted a “false narrative” and “secessionism”, on Aug 5, 2025, the sixth anniversary of abrogation of Article 370.The books include ‘Azadi’ by Arundhati Roy, ‘Kashmir: The Case for Freedom’, a collection of essays by Tariq Ali, Pankaj Mishra and others; ‘Confronting Terrorism’, also a collection of essays, edited by Maroof Raza; and ‘In Search of a Future’ by journalist and author David Devadas.The Kupwara DM ordered Wani’s detention under PSA on Sept 13, 2025, to prevent him from indulging in activities “detrimental to the security of the State”. The grounds cited included invitations he had received to attend some international conferences. The detention order came the same day he was granted bail by a Jammu NIA court in a UAPA case registered at Handwara police station.
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