Krishna Iyer, J. - (1.) A single act of outrageous violence in a running train on February 16, 1973 by an armed gang, of which the petitioner was alleged to be a member, persuaded the District Magistrate of Nadia to direct his detention under sub-section 1 (a) (ii) of S. 3 of the Maintenance of Internal Security 1971 (Act XXVI of 1971) (hereinafter called the MISA, for short). The subsequent statutory requirements have been fulfilled impeccably and the only major submission of the petitioner is that, on merits, he is not guilty, that a case charge-sheeted against him has ended in a discharge and that a single incident is insufficient to constitute 'a stream of tendency' warranting preventive detention. Most of the submissions urged have no force. The fact that the petitioner was discharged by a court for the same crime does not bear on the power to detain, nor are we impressed with the other arguments urged before us. Learned counsel Sri Malviya, appearing amicus curiae, strenuously contended that one swallow does not make a summer and likewise a solitary incident cannot imperil maintenance of internal security and so the over is bad. He relied on certain rulings of this Court and, rightly so.
(2.) This Court has been vigilant to see that isolated offenses are not exploited by executive authorities for clamping down preventive detention insouciantly to by-pass the normal judicial processes. But there is one exceptional category of cases where an only dangerous deviance may itself demonstrate its potentiality for continuing criminality and indicate previous practice, experiment and expertise. In such a narrow category of cases it is difficult to predicate abuse of power or absence of application of mind by the authority if preventive detention is directed solely on one specialised crime.
(3.) In the present case, the act imputed to the detenu is set out in the detention order thus: "That on 1-2-1973 between 10-08 and 10-14 hours you, along with your other associates, being armed with gun and other weapons committed a dacoity in a 3rd class compartment of running train S 110 Dn. between Habibpur R. S. and Kelinarayanpur Junction R. S. in Ramaghat-Santipur Section and snatched away cash Rs. 30,000/- from Shri Ashutosh Pal of Calcutta causing bullet injuries to him putting all passengers to fear of death." He who runs and reads - if the statement were true and its veracity is unavailable for judicial scrutiny - will be alarmed by the training and planning and sinister preparation of skill and spirit which has made possible the commission of the act imputed - organized dacoity in a running railway train by an armed gang equipped with fire-arms and putting innocent passengers to peril to life and property. Such action is so manifestly suggestive of desperate daring, organized ganging and habitual proclivity to violence that it cannot be held unreasonable to infer therefrom a trendy course of criminal conduct - although intercepted or detected but once - likely to break public order in a brazen manner and panicking the community by show of force. We are not concerned with the merits of the alleged offence, since that is assigned by the legislature to the subjective satisfaction of the authority. In this view, the petitioner's detention cannot, in the present case, be castigated as illegal, since we regard it as exceptional.;