New Delhi: Supreme Court judge Justice M.M. Shantanagoudar on Wednesday recused himself from hearing the plea filed by Sara Abdullah Pilot challenging her brother Omar Abdullah’s detention under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act.
Abdullah, a National Conference leader and former J&K chief minister, was charged under the Act on Thursday last week along with People’s Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti and other senior leaders from the Valley. Their six month preventive detention, in place ever since the Centre read down Article 370, was to come to an end that day.
Pilot’s plea came up for hearing before a three-judge bench comprising Justices N.V. Ramana, Shantanagoudar and Sanjiv Khanna.
“I am not participating in this matter,” Justice Shantanagoudar said at the outset. He did not provide any reasons for his recusal.
The bench said the plea could be heard on Thursday.
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Pilot’s petition has said that Abdullah’s detention is “illegal and unconstitutional”. The dossier that explains the PSA charges against Abdullah contains “patently false and ridiculous material”, it says. One of the charges used to justify his detention is that he convinced people to vote in democratic elections even when militants had issued a poll boycott.
The petition has asked the court to impugn the detention and the grounds provided in the dossier. The detention order is “vague and irrelevant without any material facts”, it says, and “is vulnerable to challenges under Article 14, 21 and 22 of the Constitution”.
Mehbooba Mufti is reportedly also planning to approach the Supreme Court against her detention this week.