BHOPAL/JABALPUR: In a shocking case of bureaucratic negligence, a “typing error” landed a young man in jail under the stringent National Security Act (NSA) for more than a year — until the Madhya Pradesh High Court intervened to secure his release this September.
Shahdol district collector Kedar Singh, found responsible for what the court called a “complete non-application of mind,” has been fined ₹2 lakh, payable to Sushant Bais, the wrongly detained man. Singh admitted he had “mixed up names” while signing off on detention orders, inadvertently approving one that listed Sushant — instead of the actual accused, Nirajkant Dwivedi — as an NSA detainee.
Sushant, a newly married resident of Budwa village in Shahdol district, was arrested and sent to judicial custody despite having already reached an amicable settlement in a minor personal dispute.
A division bench of Justices Vivek Agarwal and A.K. Singh took strong exception to the error, observing that “there was absolutely no application of mind by the state government as well, otherwise it would have bothered to read the order of detention.” The bench also issued a contempt notice to the collector for submitting what it termed a “false affidavit” in the case after Sushant’s father, Hiramani Bais, petitioned the court alleging wrongful detention.
The court further directed the chief secretary of Madhya Pradesh to take disciplinary action against the additional chief secretary (home) for endorsing the collector’s faulty order without scrutiny.
In its defence, the home department told the court that the blunder occurred due to a clerk’s “typographical mistake,” for which the employee was issued a show-cause notice.
The High Court, however, dismissed the explanation as unacceptable, stressing that the liberty of a citizen had been taken away for over a year because of bureaucratic carelessness — an act it described as a serious violation of constitutional rights.
