The Supreme Court on Tuesday canceled the preventive detention order issued against Mullah Afroz, a resident of Sambhal, Uttar Pradesh.
The apex court also overturned the decision of the Allahabad High Court, in which this detention was considered legally valid.
Afroz is a businessman and property dealer from Sambhal, who is currently lodged in Moradabad District Jail.
This entire matter is related to the violence that broke out during the survey of Shahi Jama Masjid of Sambhal in November 2024.
Four people died due to bullet injuries in this violence. The police arrested Afroz in January 2025, about 54 days after the incident.
When Afroz started getting bail in criminal cases, the District Magistrate of Sambhal imposed preventive detention on him for one year under the National Security Act (NSA) on 13 October 2025.
Preventive detention is a legal provision under which a person is kept in custody without trial to prevent him from disturbing law and order in the future.
Afroz challenged this order in Allahabad High Court. In June 2026, the High Court had rejected his petition saying that the administration had found sufficient grounds to detain him and the court could not go into the depth of the evidence.
In the Supreme Court, the bench of Justice Dipankar Dutta and Justice Sheel Nagu raised many important legal questions in this case.
The entire police case mainly rested on the confession of Afroz, who was allegedly taken into police custody.
Afroz alleged that this statement was taken by the police by threatening him with torture and encounter. The Supreme Court cited Article 20(3) of the Constitution and Section 23 of the Indian Evidence Act.
These laws protect anyone from being forced to testify against themselves and statements made to police are not admissible in court.
The court wrote in its decision, "A confession made before a police officer, without any other independent evidence, cannot serve as a basis to justify the order of preventive detention."
The bench also found that the CCTV footage and videos on the basis of which Afroz was declared the mastermind were neither handed over to him nor produced in the court.
The Supreme Court made a strong comment and said that the state government used this extraordinary law to neutralize the bail granted to Afroz. The court said that this detention seems to be less preventive and more punitive.
The order of preventive detention imposed on Afroz was for one year, which was going to end in a few days.
This means that in the long legal battle to prove this order illegal, he had to spend almost the entire period of his detention in jail. Emphasizing this, the Supreme Court wrote in its decision, "In this case the process itself became punishment."
The court made it clear that preventive detention is an extraordinary step and should be used only in very rare cases.
Afroz's freedom was taken away for almost a year, although he was granted bail in all the other cases in which he was an accused. To compensate for this, the court also imposed a fine of Rs 10 lakh on the Uttar Pradesh government.
Afroz's lawyer Divyesh Pratap Singh, reacting to this decision, told BBC that he and his legal team are very happy and satisfied with this step of the court.
He said that the detention order was very weak and had no substance. According to him, this decision of the Supreme Court has proved him completely right.
