The All India Reporter 1951 - Pepsu Section with parallel references to (1) 3 Pepsu L.R. (2) 52 Criminal Law Journal Citation: A.I.R. (38) 1951 Pepsu

The specification of the period of detention is one of the indespensable essentials that would go to make the order of detention legal and valid in the eye of law. [...] The period for which a person is ordered to be detained is the measure of the scope and extent of his activities that are likely to be prejudicial to the safety of the State or the Maintenance of Public Order and when no period of detention is specified in the detention order it is impossible to know if the detaining authority had weighed the material before him concerning the detenu on which he f [...] The ‘specification of the period of detention is one of the indispensable essentials that would go to make the order of detention legal and valid in the eye of law. [...] The provisions of the Preventive Detention Act although they invest the Government with powers of modification or revocation of the detention order yet they do not contemplate that the original order of detention should be regarded to have been made for the maximum of one year provided by s. 12 of Act Iv [4] of 1950 and the ‘sliding down’ can be effected later by the Government under S. 13. [...] Furthermore the facts of this case stand on a different footing because it is not a case of the failure of the next friend to appear and the dismissal of the suit for default of appearance but it is a case of another next friend acting on behalf of the minor without securing an order of removal of the previous next friend and the question of adjournment does not arise as urged on behalf of the pet