Habeas corpus is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether the detention is lawful.
An arrest is the act of apprehending and taking a person into custody, usually because the person has been suspected of or observed committing a crime. After being taken into custody, the person can be questioned further and/or charged. An arrest is a procedure in a criminal justice system, sometimes it is also done after a court warrant for the arrest.
Ayillyath Kuttiari Gopalan Nambiar, popularly known as A. K. Gopalan or AKG, was an Indian communist politician. He was one of 16 Communist Party of India members elected to the first Lok Sabha in 1952. Later he became one of the founding members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
The Internal Security Act 1960 was a preventive detention law in force in Malaysia. The legislation was enacted after the Federation of Malaya gained independence from Britain in 1957. The ISA allows for detention without trial or criminal charges under limited, legally defined circumstances. On 15 September 2011, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak said that this legislation will be repealed and replaced by two new laws. The ISA was replaced and repealed by the Security Offences Act 2012 which has been passed by Parliament and given the royal assent on 18 June 2012. The Act came into force on 31 July 2012.
Preventive detention is an imprisonment that is putatively justified for non-punitive purposes, most often to prevent further criminal acts.
The Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) was a controversial law passed by the Indian parliament in 1971 giving the administration of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Indian law enforcement agencies very broad powers – indefinite preventive detention of individuals, search and seizure of property without warrants, and wiretapping – in the quelling of civil and political disorder in India, as well as countering foreign-inspired sabotage, terrorism, subterfuge and threats to national security. The law was amended several times during the subsequently declared national emergency (1975–1977) and used for quelling political dissent. Finally it was repealed in 1977, when Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 Indian general election and the Janata Party came to power.
The Fundamental Rights in India enshrined in part III of the Constitution of India guarantee civil liberties such that all Indians can lead their lives in peace and harmony as citizens of India. These rights are known as "fundamental" as they are the most essential for all-round development i.e., material, intellectual, moral and spiritual and protected by fundamental law of the land i.e. constitution. If the rights provided by Constitution especially the Fundamental rights are violated the Supreme Court and the High Courts can issue writs under Articles 32 and 226 of the Constitution, respectively, directing the State Machinery for enforcement of the fundamental rights.
Administrative detention is arrest and detention of individuals by the state without trial. A number of jurisdictions claim that it is done for security reasons. Many countries claim to use administrative detention as a means to combat terrorism or rebellion, to control illegal immigration, or to otherwise protect the ruling regime.
The Internal Security Act 1960 (ISA) of Singapore is a statute that grants the executive power to enforce preventive detention, prevent subversion, suppress organized violence against persons and property, and do other things incidental to the internal security of Singapore. The present Act was originally enacted by the Parliament of Malaysia as the Internal Security Act 1960, and extended to Singapore on 16 September 1963 when Singapore was a state of the Federation of Malaysia.
The Constitution of India provides the right to freedom, given in article 19 with the view of guaranteeing individual rights that were considered vital by the framers of the constitution. The right to freedom in Article 19 guarantees the freedom of speech and expression, as one of its six freedoms.
The National Security Act of 1980 is an act of the Indian Parliament promulgated on 23 September 1980 whose purpose is "to provide for preventive detention in certain cases and for matters connected therewith". The act extends to the whole of India. It Contains 18 sections. This act empowers the Central Government and State Governments to detain a person to prevent him/her from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of India, the relations of India with foreign countries, the maintenance of public order, or the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the community it is necessary so to do. The act also gives power to the governments to detain a foreigner in a view to regulate his presence or expel from the country. The act was passed in 1980 during the Indira Gandhi Government.
The Constitution Act, 1951, enacted in 1951, made several changes to the Fundamental Rights provisions of the Indian constitution. It provided means to restrict freedom of speech and expression, validation of zamindari abolition laws, and clarified that the right to equality does not bar the enactment of laws which provide "special consideration" for weaker sections of society.
Article 9 of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore, specifically Article 9(1), guarantees the right to life and the right to personal liberty. The Court of Appeal has called the right to life the most basic of human rights, but has yet to fully define the term in the Constitution. Contrary to the broad position taken in jurisdictions such as Malaysia and the United States, the High Court of Singapore has said that personal liberty only refers to freedom from unlawful incarceration or detention.
Chng Suan Tze v. Minister for Home Affairs is a seminal case in administrative law decided by the Court of Appeal of Singapore in 1988. The Court decided the appeal in the appellants' favour on a technical ground, but considered obiter dicta the reviewability of government power in preventive detention cases under the Internal Security Act ("ISA"). The case approved the application by the court of an objective test in the review of government discretion under the ISA, stating that all power has legal limits and the rule of law demands that the courts should be able to examine the exercise of discretionary power. This was a landmark shift from the position in the 1971 High Court decision Lee Mau Seng v. Minister of Home Affairs, which had been an authority for the application of a subjective test until it was overruled by Chng Suan Tze.
Teo Soh Lung v Minister for Home Affairs is the name of two cases of the Singapore courts, a High Court decision delivered in 1989 and the 1990 judgment in the appeal from that decision to the Court of Appeal. The cases were concerned with the constitutionality of amendments made to the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore and the Internal Security Act ("ISA") in 1989. The latter statute authorizes detention without trial on security grounds. These amendments had the effect of changing the law on judicial review of executive discretion under the ISA by re-establishing the subjective test enunciated in the 1971 High Court decision Lee Mau Seng v Minister for Home Affairs which had been overruled in 1988 by Chng Suan Tze v Minister for Home Affairs, and limiting the right of judicial review to ensuring compliance with procedures specified in the ISA. In other words, the amendments were intended to render the exercise of power by the President and the Minister for Home Affairs under the ISA to detain persons without trial not justiciable by the courts. Both the High Court and Court of Appeal found that these amendments were constitutional because Parliament had done nothing more than enact the rule of law relating to the law applicable to judicial review. Thus, the amendments validly operated to deprive the applicant Teo Soh Lung of the ability to apply to the courts for judicial review.
The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 is a law enacted by the state of Maharashtra in India in 1999 to combat organised crime and terrorism. Known as 'MCOCA', the Act provides the State Government with special powers to tackle these issues, including powers of surveillance, relaxed evidentiary standards and procedural safeguards, and prescribing additional criminal penalties, including the death penalty. The law was introduced by a coalition government of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Shiv Sena.
Aruna Sen v. Government of Bangladesh (1975) 27 DLR (HCD) 122 is a case of the High Court Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. The case concerns unlawful detention under the Special Powers Act, 1974 (SPA). The judgement set a precedent for invalidating most detentions under the SPA.
Abdul Latif Mirza v. Government of Bangladesh 31 DLR (AD) 33 is a case of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh. The case concerns preventive detention. The court asserted the principles of natural justice.
The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA) is a preventive detention law under which a person is taken into custody to prevent them from acting harmfully against "the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order" in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Whereas PSA applies only to Jammu and Kashmir, it is very similar to the National Security Act that is used by the central and other state governments of India for preventive detention.
Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, AIR 1978 SC 597, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of India in which the Court significantly expanded the interpretation of Article 21 of the Constitution of India. It overruled A. K. Gopalan v. State of Madras, which had implied the exclusiveness of fundamental rights, and established a relationship between Articles 14, 19, and 21 of the Constitution, holding that a law depriving a person of 'personal liberty' must not violate any of them. Once again overruling A. K. Gopalan, the Court in this case held that a 'procedure' under Article 21 of the Constitution cannot be arbitrary, unfair, oppressive, or unreasonable.
