PESHAWAR, Aug 31: The Peshawar High Court on Wednesday ruled that there should be sufficient evidence on record for curtailing the liberty of a person under the laws of preventive detention.

A two-member bench comprising the high court’s Chief Justice Tariq Pervez and Justice Jehanzeb Raheem accepted a writ petition filed by a detainee, Mujtaba Iqbal, an alleged member of a proscribed organization, Tehrik-i-Jaffria Pakistan, challenging his detention under section 11EEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

The bench set aside an order issued by NWFP home secretary Abdul Kareem Qasuria by declaring it illegal and ordered that the detainee should be set at liberty.

The detainee was arrested on July 23 for a period of 30 days under section 11 EEE of the Anti-Terrorism Act, a provision dealing with preventive detention. On Aug 21, another order was issued through which his detention period was extended by two months.

Advocate Shaukat Ali appeared for the petitioner and contended that the petitioner was arrested in an arbitrary manner without any specific charges against him. He added that the detainee had given an undertaking that he was not a member of the proscribed organization.

The bench asked the additional advocate general, Saeed Khan, and an additional secretary of the home department, Fazlur Rehman, whether there were any specific allegations against the detainee. The secretary informed that they had received a request from the Dera Ismail Khan’s district police officer for issuing detention orders against certain members of the proscribed organization.

The bench observed: “It is high time we took notice of the fact that the administrative authority least cares while dealing with the matter of liberty of citizens.”