UDF government virtually made a martyr out of BJP councillor and 'known rowdy' R Sugathan

It looks like the UDF government had used guile and deception to throw BJP councillor R Sugathan in jail under the Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act (KAAPA).

The High Court, while ordering Sugathan's release from Viyyur Jail on Tuesday, found merit in the contentions raised by Sugathan's wife, Aswathi G R, in her writ petition filed before the court to quash the detention order issued on June 8 this year. The two-Judge bench of the High Court said the administration under the UDF government had committed five grave errors.

One, it refused to hear Sugathan. Two, it did not even consider whether the bail conditions imposed by the High Court while granting Sugathan anticipatory bail were sufficient before incarcerating him. Three, the government jailed Sugathan even if it did not have a case that his release would disturb 'public order'.

Four, the detention order that called the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation councillor a 'known rowdy' was deliberately vague; 15 of the nearly 300 pages of the detention order issued by the Thiruvananthapuram Collector were missing, and 41 other pages were illegible. Five, the detention order was stingy with facts.

Refusal to hear Sugathan
The Vazhottukonam councillor submitted representations against his detention, through the Viyyur Jail superintendent, to both the Additional Chief Secretary (Home Department) and the Chief Secretary. The government refused to consider them and said it will go only by the recommendation of an Advisory Board it had constituted.

Citing various Supreme Court and High Court judgments, Justice Muralee Krishna S said that the government was "duty-bound to consider the representations submitted by the detenue independently". The Court said that even if an Advisory Board had been formed, the state government was legally obliged to hear the accused.

"The unexplained delay in considering the representation violates the constitutional safeguard guaranteed under Article 22(5) of the Constitution, making further detention of the detenue bad in the eyes of law," the court said in its order.

Article 22(5) says that the person detained should be given the "earliest opportunity" to make a case against the order.

Weren't HC's conditions sufficient?
The High Court, in its June 1 order granting Sugathan anticipatory bail, had imposed on the councillor a set of conditions. The Collector's detention order, issued a week later on June 8, did not have any mention of these conditions. In short, the administration did not bother to assess whether these court conditions would be good enough to thwart any malicious intent Sugathan would have carried around during his bail period.

The Supreme Court, in an order issued in 2025, said: "When bail was granted by the jurisdictional court, that too on conditions, the detaining authority ought to have examined whether they were sufficient to curb the evil of further indulgence in identical activities."

The High Court, in its judgment on Tuesday, said that preventive detention should be invoked only if it is clear that all measures available to authorities would be insufficient to keep an accused in check. "Being an order which curtails the fundamental rights of a person even without trial, the authorities should exhaust all other statutory steps available to prevent the detenue from involving in similar activities of breach of public order, before initiation of steps for preventive detention," the High Court said.

Sugathan in the dark
The High Court found that the Collector's detention order had 15 missing pages and 41 illegible ones. Interestingly, the government did not claim that these 'missing' and 'illegible' pages were not taken into consideration for issuing the detention order.

This meant that Sugathan had only a vague order in his possession and, therefore, was stripped of his fundamental right to put up an informed response.

"When legible copies of material documents relied by the authorities concerned for issuing the order of preventive detention are not supplied to the detenue, the statutory right guaranteed to him for submitting a proper representation to the Government concerned or before the Advisory Board against the order is violated, as he could not gather full information of the cases considered against him and the facts taken into consideration by the detaining authority," the court said.

Law & Order vs Public Order
"The intention behind the law of preventive detention of a person is to maintain public order and not law and order," the court said. The court then said that the detention order against Sugathan, by the government's own admission, was to maintain 'law and order' and not 'public order'.

The Supreme Court in 2024 had differentiated the two. "If a contravention in its effect is confined only to a few individuals directly involved, as distinct from a wide spectrum of the public, it could raise a problem of law and order only. In other words, the true distinction between the areas of law and order and public order lies not merely in the nature or quality of the act, but in the degree and extent of its reach upon society," the apex court said.

In other words, Sugathan's release at the most could have caused only a 'law and order' problem.

Concealed facts
There are seven criminal cases mentioned against Sugathan in the detention order.

In six cases, investigation was completed, and the final reports have been filed before the courts. In five cases, Sugathan was granted bail. In the sixth case, though the final report was filed before the court, Sugathan was not arrested as he was absconding. In the last criminal case, the investigation has not yet been completed and, therefore, Sugathan was not arrested.

Many case details that would have been favourable to Sugathan, like the withdrawal of a case by a complainant or that there was no pending bail application in another case, were left out in the detention order.

"The cumulative effect of these omissions shows that the (detention) order is issued in a casual manner without proper application of mind or subjective satisfaction," the High Court said.

Sugathan's wife was represented by advocate Suvin R Menon.