Observing that a preventive detention cannot become punitive, the Supreme Court on Tuesday slapped a cost of ₹ 10 lakh on the Uttar Pradesh government for passing an order under the National Security Act (NSA) against an accused in the Sambhal mosque violence in November 2024
Four deaths were reported during the violence. The police arrested Afroz nearly two months after the incident. The court noted that the state did not deny the fact of torture suffered by the appellant in custody.
Setting aside the detention order issued in October 2025 by the District Magistrate, Sambhal, a bench of justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu held that it was based on a confessional statement made by the accused while in custody and the same could not have served as the sole basis for curtailing the liberty of the accused. The order was passed on a petition filed by one Mulla Afroz, who was an accused in the violence that followed an order of survey of the Sambhal mosque by a district court on November 24, 2024. The detention order under NSA was passed on October 13, 2025 and was again confirmed on November 28, 2025 for a period of one year, expiring two months later. In such circumstances, the process was made the punishment…We consider it prudent to impose costs of ₹ 10 lakh on the state for being made over to the appellant within a month from the date of this judgment.
The court said, “The appellant has already suffered considerable loss of liberty, even while being granted bail in all the cases relating to the incident in which he featured as an accused. “By no stretch of imagination, can the confessional statement of the appellant be seen as voluntary in nature,” it said. “Therefore, we are of the considered opinion that a confessional statement made before a police officer cannot, by itself, and in the absence of any independent material lending support thereto, constitute a basis for forming the subjective satisfaction necessary to sustain an order of preventive detention,” the Supreme Court said. The bench noted that the police used the same material for sustaining both the criminal and preventive detention proceedings which made the court to observe, “The detention order has assumed a character more punitive than preventive.”
