The Supreme Court is set to consider whether a habeas corpus petition challenging the continued detention of a person due to successive arrests is maintainable after bail has been denied to him.

A partial Court working days bench of Justices MM Sundresh and Sheel Nagu on July 1 issued notice on the plea of one Haji Abdul Razzak, who is stated to be in custody since August 2021 despite not having been supplied written grounds of arrest (as mandated by law).

During the hearing, Senior Advocate Siddharth Dave, for Razzak, referred to the decision in Mihir Rajesh Shah v. State of Maharashtra and highlighted that the grounds of arrest were not supplied to Razzak in writing. He further assailed the High Court's dismissal of Razzak's habeas corpus petition solely on the ground that his bail had been rejected.

Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, for the State of Madhya Pradesh, argued against the maintainability of habeas corpus proceedings. He submitted that all the contentions were raised before the High Court which then held Razzak's custody to be 'correct' as his bail plea had been rejected.

Justice Sundresh however remarked that bail rejection aside, larger issue(s) of law required consideration. As such, the bench issued notice on the petition challenging the High Court order.

Briefly put, the petitioner was first arrested in August 2021 in connection with the offence of attempt to murder (Section 307) IPC. Subsequently, detention orders under the National Security Act were imposed against him on three occasions - August 2021, April 2022 and January 2023. However, as per him, each detention order was later revoked as they were not approved by the State Advisory Board constituted under the NSA.

Among other things, the petitioner claims abuse of executive power by the authorities in his case. In this regard, he states that he, alongwith his family, was engaged in mining and other activities in Madhya Pradesh. In 2021, some disputes arose between him and certain influential political functionaries with regard to mining leases, etc. Various writ petitions were filed before the High Court by entities associated with his family, wherein interim protection orders were passed.

Thereafter, several criminal cases came to be registered against the petitioner and he got arrested in 2021. Since then, he has remained deprived of liberty and whenever his release becomes imminent, fresh criminal proceedings/coercive action are allegedly initiated so as to continue his incarceration.

To establish the claim of abuse of power, the petitioner further mentions that besides detention orders, other coercive actions were also taken against him and his family members. Their bank accounts were frozen, demolitions actions initiated and mining operations suspended, which indicated a "sustained and coordinated exercise of executive power" designed to ensure his continued incarceration.

In this backdrop, the petitioner avers that he filed a habeas corpus petition before the High Court challenging not any isolated arrest, but rather, the legality of a continuing pattern of detention arising from repetitive arrests, successive criminal prosecution and repeated invocation of preventive detention law. It was not intended as a substitute for ordinary bail proceedings, he asserts.

The petitioner points out that during pendency of the writ proceedings, the High Court passed several orders raising concerns about the conduct of the investigating agencies. But ultimately, it dismissed the writ petition relying on State of Madhya Pradesh v. Kusum Sahu and held that habeas corpus proceedings could not be maintained since the petitioner's bail plea had been rejected.

Notably, the petitioner distinguishes his case from Kusum Sahu's by contending that in the captioned case, the habeas corpus writ was filed after rejection of successive bail applications. However, the petitioner (Razzak) instituted an independent constitutional challenge to his continued detention before filing his successive bail application.

Insofar as the High Court held that the decisions in Prabir Purkayastha v. State and Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India were inapplicable to the petitioner's case as those cases arose out of economic offenses, the petitioner argues that the constitutional guarantee under Article 22(1) of the Constitution is not offense-specific. Since the High Court had found that grounds of arrest were not supplied in writing, the decisions were applicable.

The petitioner also disputes the High Court finding that the decision in Mihir Shah case applied prospectively and therefore did not help the petitioner. It is averred that the judgment in that case did not create any new right and in the absence of any express declaration of prospective overruling, the High Court could not deny benefit of the judgment to the petitioner.

Case Title: HAJI ABDUL RAZZAK Versus STATE OF MADHYA PRADESH AND ORS., SLP(Crl) No. 11812/2026