Nagpur:In a major legal development, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court has set aside the preventive detention of Shailesh Dnyaneshwar Kedar, the 38-year-old nephew of notorious gangster Santosh Ambekar. The Court declared Kedar’s detention under the Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities (MPDA) Act, 1981 as illegal and unjustified.
The division bench comprising Justice Nitin W. Sambre and Justice Vrushali V. Joshi ruled that the grounds cited for Kedar’s detention — including his alleged involvement in extortion, violence, and disruption of public peace — did not meet the threshold for preventive detention under the MPDA Act. Kedar had been detained in October 2024 and lodged at Yerwada Central Prison, Pune.
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25 April 2025
The Court observed that the two FIRs registered against Kedar in June and July 2024, along with two in-camera statements alleging extortion, pertained to individual disputes rather than posing a threat to public order. Citing landmark judgments such as Kanu Biswas v. State of West Bengal and Ameena Begum v. State of Telangana, the Court stressed the crucial difference between disturbances of law and order and threats to public order.
“From the nature of the offence, it appears that it is against an individual… it does not affect the public order. The ordinary law is sufficient to take care of it,” the judgment stated.
Advocate Shavez H. Mansuri appeared for the petitioner Shailesh Kedar, while APP H.D. Marathe represented the State.
This verdict serves as a strong reminder of constitutional safeguards protecting personal liberty and the strict standards required to justify preventive detention.
