Preventive detention and subjective satisfaction fail where vital facts about voluntariness and retraction are ignored.

Preventive detention requires the detaining authority to consider all material facts bearing on subjective satisfaction; omission of vital facts vitiates the order. The authority must assess whether confessional statements were voluntary, whether they were obtained under duress, and whether they were promptly retracted, because those matters can affect detention on the basis of such statements. Refusal to allow lawyer's presence or consultation during interrogation and failure to produce the detenu before the Magistrate at the stated time were also relevant to voluntariness. As these facts were not placed before the authority, the decision-making process suffered from non-application of mind and the detention order was held invalid.

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Issues: Whether the detention order under the preventive detention law was vitiated because the detaining authority did not consider the material facts relating to the refusal of lawyer's presence during interrogation, the failure to produce the detenu before the Magistrate at the stated time, and the retraction of the confessional statements at the first available opportunity.

Analysis: The constitutional and statutory requirement of subjective satisfaction for a preventive detention order is not satisfied if facts that are material to the formation of that satisfaction are withheld from the detaining authority or are not considered by it. Facts bearing on whether the confessional statements were voluntary, whether they were obtained under duress, and whether they were promptly retracted could materially affect the decision to detain. The refusal to permit the advocate's presence or consultation during interrogation and the non-production of the detenu before the Magistrate at the stated time were relevant to the voluntariness of the statements. The subsequent retraction of those statements was equally relevant because the detention order was founded mainly on those statements. Since these matters were not placed before the detaining authority, the decision-making process suffered from non-application of mind.

Conclusion: The detention order was invalid because the detaining authority's subjective satisfaction was vitiated by non-consideration of vital material facts.

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