Article 22 and the safeguards a preventive detention order must satisfy

Background

These safeguards are in the news this week because the Kerala High Court, in a judgment reported on 12 October 2026, set aside a detention under the Kerala Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 2007 and ordered the detenue's release, holding that supplying the order only in Malayalam to a man who knew only Kannada violated Article 22(5).
Article 22(5) of the Constitution requires the detaining authority to communicate to the person the grounds on which the detention order has been made and to give him the earliest opportunity of making a representation against it.
The Kerala High Court read this, with Section 7(2) of that State Act, to mean that the order and the documents relied on must be supplied in a language the detenue knows, and that an oral explanation is not enough.
The reading rests on a line of authority that includes the Constitution Bench decision in Harikisan of 1962, Hadibandhu Das of 1969 and Lallubhai Jogibhai Patel of 1981.
A detention under the State Act of 2007 is ordered by the District Magistrate, confirmed by the State Government and may be extended, in that case by six months.
A failure in the procedure makes the detention itself unsustainable, as the Court showed by setting aside both the original and the continuation order.