The Public Safety Act
The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act 1978 permits administrative detention — imprisonment ordered by an executive officer, without charge, without trial, and without the evidence being tested in a court.
OHCHR recorded in 2019 that authorities continue to use various forms of arbitrary detention against protesters, political dissidents and civil society actors, and documented a specific practice that defeats judicial review entirely:[1]
OHCHR was informed that despite the Jammu and Kashmir High Court setting aside numerous the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA) detention orders, the Jammu and Kashmir authorities continue to detain people by imposing new PSA orders even before suspects leave prisons.
UN OHCHR, 8 July 2019, para. 12 — quoted as published
Read that mechanism carefully. A detainee petitions the High Court. The court finds the detention unlawful and quashes the order. Before the detainee can walk out of the gate, a fresh order is issued. The victory in court changes nothing. Habeas corpus — the oldest remedy there is — is rendered ornamental not by defying the court but by outpacing it.
In July 2018 the Government of Jammu and Kashmir amended section 10 of the PSA, removing the prohibition on detaining permanent residents of Jammu and Kashmir outside the state.[1] The practical effect is that a detainee can be held in a prison hundreds of miles away, where families cannot visit and local lawyers cannot appear.
The UAPA
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is the anti-terror statute. Its significance is not that it permits detention without charge — it is that its bail provisions make prolonged pre-trial custody the normal outcome. The fourteen UN experts described both laws in November 2025 as laws that “permit prolonged detention without charge or trial and contain vague and overbroad definitions of terrorism.”[2]
On 28 February 2019 the central government declared the religious-political organisation Jamaat-e-Islami (Jammu and Kashmir) an unlawful association under section 3(1) of the UAPA.[3]
The documenters
The clearest illustration of what the UAPA does is what was done with it to the people who compiled the evidence this site relies on.
| Person | Detained | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Khurram Parvez | Arrested by the National Investigation Agency under the UAPA, 22 November 2021 | Held 4 years 7 months without his trial reaching the framing of charges. Bail granted by the Delhi High Court 10 June 2026, which held that prolonged incarceration with no realistic prospect of an early conclusion justified release despite the UAPA’s bail bar. Released 23 July 2026. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention addressed his case in Opinion A/HRC/WGAD/2023/8. |
| Irfan Mehraj | Arrested under the UAPA, March 2023 | Bail granted 18 July 2026. Released 23 July 2026. |
| Aasif Sultan | Arrested August 2018 | Held over five years. Granted bail in April 2022 and immediately re-detained under the PSA. Re-arrested under the UAPA in a fresh case on 29 February 2024 — the same day he reached home for the first time in 2,010 days. |
| Fahad Shah | Arrested February 2022 | Jailed 658 days. Released on bail 23 November 2023, a court finding there was not enough evidence to try him for terrorism. Continues to face trial under other UAPA provisions and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act. |
Bail is not acquittal, and this site does not present it as such. All four men face or faced charges that remain live. What the record shows is not that they were vindicated but something narrower and more damning: that the state was able to hold them for four years, five years, 658 days, 2,010 days — without a trial concluding, and in Khurram Parvez’s case without charges even being framed.
The conditions attached to the 2026 releases are worth recording. Both Khurram Parvez and Irfan Mehraj must arrange their own accommodation in Delhi, where they face trial, and are barred from travelling to Kashmir. The two men most responsible for documenting human rights in Kashmir are, as of this writing, legally prohibited from being there.
April 2025 onward: detention at scale
The fourteen UN mandate holders demanded “the immediate unconditional release of all individuals arbitrarily detained in Jammu and Kashmir.”[2]
Cordon and search operations
The practice through which mass detention becomes routine. A military strategy used in the early 1990s and heavily criticised, it was reintroduced in the Kashmir Valley in 2017. According to national and international human rights organisations, cordon and search operations enable a range of violations: physical intimidation and assault, invasion of privacy, arbitrary and unlawful detention, collective punishment, and destruction of private property.[4]
A village is surrounded, the men are removed for screening, houses are searched without warrants. No individual suspicion is required, because the unit of suspicion is the village.
Sources & notes
- UN OHCHR, Update, 8 July 2019, para. 12.
- UN OHCHR Special Procedures, 24 November 2025.
- UN OHCHR, Update, 8 July 2019, para. 15.
- UN OHCHR, Update, 8 July 2019, para. 11.