Preventive detention requires live grounds, statutory conformity, and full disclosure of material facts before satisfaction is formed.

Preventive detention under the Act must rest on live, material facts and strict conformity with the statutory language. Grounds based on 1977 incidents were held too stale to support a 1979 detention order because they lacked the necessary nexus with current preventive satisfaction. An order framed only to prevent a person from "keeping smuggled goods" did not satisfy Section 3(1), which requires detention to prevent a person from "engaging in" that activity. Non-placement before the detaining authority of the connected show-cause notice, reply, adjudication order, and related facts was also treated as a failure to consider vital material, vitiating the detention.

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Issues: (i) Whether the detention grounds based on incidents of 1977 were too stale to sustain the detention order passed in 1979; (ii) whether an order framed to prevent a person from "keeping smuggled goods" satisfied Section 3(1) of the Act, which permits detention to prevent a person from "engaging in" keeping smuggled goods; and (iii) whether non-placement before the detaining authority of the connected adjudicatory proceedings and other material facts vitiated the detention.

Issue (i): Whether the detention grounds based on incidents of 1977 were too stale to sustain the detention order passed in 1979.

Analysis: The first two grounds rested on search and seizure incidents that had taken place in 1977 and the adjudicatory proceedings arising from them had also ended in 1977. The temporal gap removed the live connection required between the past incidents and the preventive satisfaction for detention.

Conclusion: The stale grounds could not furnish the necessary nexus for the detention order.

Issue (ii): Whether an order framed to prevent a person from "keeping smuggled goods" satisfied Section 3(1) of the Act, which permits detention to prevent a person from "engaging in" keeping smuggled goods.

Analysis: Clause (iii) of Section 3(1) required the authority to form satisfaction that detention was necessary to prevent engagement in transporting, concealing, or keeping smuggled goods. An order merely reciting "keeping smuggled goods" omitted the statutory element of engagement and could not be justified by importing the detaining authority's subjective intention beyond the language used in the order. The Court also distinguished this from Clause (iv), which concerns dealing in smuggled goods as a separate activity.

Conclusion: The detention order was not in conformity with Section 3(1) of the Act.

Issue (iii): Whether non-placement before the detaining authority of the connected adjudicatory proceedings and other material facts vitiated the detention.

Analysis: The records showed that proceedings arising from the 22 January 1979 seizure, including the show-cause notice, reply, and adjudication order, were material to the detention decision but were not shown to have been placed before the detaining authority. Those materials were capable of affecting the authority's satisfaction, especially in light of the retraction from the earlier statement and the different basis of the adjudicatory notice. The omission amounted to failure to consider vital facts.

Conclusion: The detention was vitiated for non-placement and non-consideration of vital and material facts.

Final Conclusion: The preventive detention could not stand, as the earlier grounds were stale, the order did not match the statutory requirement, and the detaining authority had not considered material facts necessary for valid subjective satisfaction.

Ratio Decidendi: Preventive detention must strictly conform to the statutory language and be founded on live, material facts placed before the detaining authority; stale grounds, an inaccurately framed order, or omission of vital materials vitiate the requisite satisfaction.

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