Kashmir Case Puts India's 1960 Animal Law In Focus

(MENAFN- Kashmir Observer) By Sanjeev Sirohi

ADVERTISEMENT

At the Srinagar Bench of the Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh High Court, the case of Anwar Jan had little to do with animal welfare when it first reached the courtroom.

Jan had been placed under preventive detention under the J&K Public Safety Act after a record that included several criminal cases and seven cases linked to alleged bovine smuggling.

The Division Bench of Justice Sanjeev Kumar and Justice Mohd Yousuf Wani eventually quashed his detention order. Then, before closing the case, the judges turned to the law governing animal cruelty and found it badly out of step with the harm it seeks to prevent.

The judgment, Anwar Jan (Choudhary) v. Union Territory of J&K & Others, was pronounced on Sept. 24 and uploaded the following day. The court's intervention came after Jan challenged a June 30 decision that had upheld his preventive detention. His detention order had been issued by the District Magistrate of Anantnag on Dec. 1, 2025.

The record before the Division Bench was extensive.

ADVERTISEMENT

Jan had been arrested in connection with FIRs registered in 2015, 2017, 2021 and 2022. He had also faced an earlier preventive detention order in 2018, which the High Court quashed in April 2019. Seven FIRs connected to alleged bovine smuggling followed in 2022.

Those cases invoked provisions of the Indian Penal Code along with Section 11 of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960.

A further detention order came in January 2023. Jan challenged that order as well, and the High Court stayed it in February 2023. Two more FIRs followed in 2025.

By the time the latest detention order was issued, Jan was already in custody in connection with one of those cases.

That fact became central to the appeal.

The judges found that the detention record failed to show awareness that Jan was already behind bars. The authority also failed to record a compelling reason for invoking preventive detention against someone already in custody.

Supreme Court precedents, the Bench said, require a genuine assessment of the possibility that a person may secure release and resume prejudicial activities before preventive detention can be invoked.

The record also omitted significant information about Jan's bail position.

He had secured bail in one 2025 case, while his bail plea in another had been rejected by a trial court and remained pending before the High Court when the detention order was issued. The judges found that the detention authority had failed to account for those developments.

Another defect concerned the description of the charges in one FIR.

The detention order cited five provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, while the FIR contained three. The judges treated the error as evidence that the authority had relied mechanically on the police dossier. Such inaccuracies, they held, could impair a detainee's constitutional right to make an effective representation under Article 22(5).

The timing of the detention raised another problem. The order was issued on Dec. 1, 2025, while authorities executed it on Dec. 19. The government gave no explanation for the 18-day delay.

Then came the detail that the Bench regarded as decisive.

Five days before the detention order was issued, the office of the Director General of Prisons had already directed that Jan be lodged at District Jail Bhaderwah under preventive detention laws. That communication followed a letter from the District Magistrate concerning jail arrangements. The judges concluded that the sequence suggested that the decision to detain Jan had already been taken before the formal order was issued.

The court therefore quashed the detention order and directed that Jan be released if another case did not require his custody.

The judges then widened the lens.

Their observations on animal welfare emerged from the same allegations that had formed part of the detention case. The Bench traced India's animal-protection tradition to ideas such as ahimsa, or non-violence, and dharma, or duty. It referred to the special cultural place occupied by cows, elephants and buffaloes and recognised the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1960 as a significant legislative step.

Read Also Brother's Antecedents No Bar to Orderly's Regularisation: HC Premature Retirement No Punishment: J&K HC

Then the judgment confronted the law's central weakness.

The Act's penalties for certain forms of cruelty remain remarkably small. Section 11 provides for fines of ₹10 to ₹50 for a first offence. Subsequent offences can attract a fine of ₹25 to ₹100, imprisonment of up to three months, or both.

The scale of those penalties has drawn criticism for years, including in parliamentary discussion of animal cruelty laws.

The High Court connected those amounts to the changing ways animals are abused. It pointed to cases in which people record acts of cruelty and post the videos on social media for views.

Such conduct creates a disturbing mismatch between the seriousness of the suffering and the consequences available under the principal animal-protection law.

The judges put the issue in human terms. Animals experience pain, stress and fear, they said, while the legal system continues in significant respects to treat them as objects or property. The court called for legislation that formally recognises animal sentience and replaces nominal fines with imprisonment and substantially heavier penalties.

The observations also highlighted Kashmir's own tensions surrounding bovine smuggling.

The Bench said such smuggling constitutes a criminal offence and can also offend the religious sentiments of a large section of India's population. Where such activity is established, the judges said, law enforcement agencies must act firmly and according to law.

That final qualification is central to the judgment.

The court's concern over animal cruelty did not become a justification for bypassing constitutional protections.

The Bench expressly said preventive detention cannot substitute ordinary criminal prosecution. Articles 21 and 22 impose mandatory safeguards, and authorities must respect them even when allegations involve activities capable of disturbing public order. Criminality, the judges said, calls for diligent and expeditious prosecution under ordinary law.

That principle gives the judgment its wider significance.

The court simultaneously demanded stronger protection for animals and stronger protection for constitutional liberty. A serious allegation, however troubling, still has to move through lawful procedures.

A law intended to protect animals also has to impose consequences that correspond to the suffering it seeks to prevent.

India's animal-protection framework was written in 1960. The High Court's intervention suggests that the social and technological world surrounding that law has changed considerably since then. Animal abuse can now become recorded content, circulate within minutes and reach vast audiences. The statutory punishment, in many instances, remains measured in amounts that began as small fines decades ago.

The case therefore leaves two legal messages in the same judgment. Authorities cannot use preventive detention as a shortcut around constitutional safeguards. Legislatures, the court suggested, can also no longer treat animal cruelty as an offence whose consequences remain almost symbolic.

The man at the centre of the case was ordered released because the state failed to follow the rules governing his detention. The animals mentioned in the judgment remain subject to a law the judges said needs stronger consequences.

Together, those conclusions point to the same principle: the seriousness of state power, and the seriousness of suffering inflicted on living beings, ultimately depends on whether the law gives both realities meaningful weight.

• The author is an advocate based in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh. He writes on legal developments, court judgments and issues concerning law and public policy, and can be reached at [email protected].

MENAFN30092026000215011059ID1111742440