The Punjab Government has told the Punjab and Haryana High Court that there is absolutely no merit in Lok Sabha member Amritpal Singh’s petition challenging the third detention order dated April 17, 2025, either factually or legally.
This came as the Bench headed by Chief Justice Sheel Nagu imposed costs of Rs 10,000 on the state for filing its reply on the date of hearing itself. The reply was to be filed last Saturday.
At the outset, Chief Justice Nagu questioned the “late” challenge to the detention order. “I am told they challenged it seven months after the order was passed,” the Chief Justice observed.
Senior advocate RS Cheema replied: “The court knows the procedure. There is a board… There was representation to the board…. They went to the Supreme Court where a matter was pending and the SC relegated.”
Cheema added the time factor was required to be taken into consideration not from the time the order was passed but when the matter was placed before the board. He added that the reply was handed over today, instead of Saturday, since they required time to go through its voluminous content.
Taking note of the submissions, the Bench fixed the matter for further hearing on February 2. Amritpal’s petition was filed through counsel Arshdeep Singh Cheema, Imaan Singh Khara and Harjot Singh Mann.
The government, meanwhile, submitted that the gravity of the grounds of detention, coupled with the petitioner’s conduct, justified the satisfaction of the detaining authority.
Describing the impugned detention order as “eminently constitutional, manifestly lawful and comprehensively valid”, Punjab said the court’s attention might be drawn to a hit list of persons prepared by the petitioner’s sympathisers/sympathisers of the Waris Punjab De group, with the intent and objective of physically eliminating those who had the potential to publicly expose the petitioner’s acts and misdeeds.
“Virtually not a word has been said by the petitioner in the writ petition regarding the hit list, which constitutes an essential part of the grounds of detention,” the state submitted.
“The detaining authority would have been guilty of a grave dereliction of duty had it turned a blind eye to the situation and not decided to order the detention of the petitioner vide the impugned detention order. The state would also have been guilty of a grave dereliction of duty had it not approved the impugned order of detention,” it added.
The state further submitted that the present grounds of detention dated April 17, 2025, were completely different from the grounds of the petitioner’s first and second detentions.
The Bench, on the previous date of hearing, had called for the original records forming the basis of Amritpal’s preventive detention order
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