Preventive detention fails without a live nexus: stale allegations and no later prejudicial conduct cannot justify custody.

Preventive detention requires a live and proximate nexus between alleged prejudicial conduct and the detention order. Where the detention was founded mainly on a single alleged export transaction and the record showed no further prejudicial activity for more than two years before the order, intervening investigative steps such as statements, searches and summonses did not preserve that nexus. The grounds were therefore treated as stale and illusory, and the detention was held unsustainable.

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Issues: Whether the preventive detention order was vitiated for want of a live-link between the alleged prejudicial activity and the detention order, and whether the grounds relied upon were stale, illusory, or lacked real nexus with the need for detention.

Analysis: The detention was founded essentially on a single alleged act dated 11.12.2018, namely, an export transaction said to have been carried out only on paper. The subsequent material consisted of investigation steps such as recording of statements, searches, summonses, reports, and related proceedings, but disclosed no further prejudicial activity by the petitioner between 11.12.2018 and the passing of the detention order on 15.01.2021. Preventive detention requires a rational and proximate connection between past conduct and the need to prevent future prejudicial conduct. Where the last specifically alleged act is separated from the detention order by more than two years, and no intervening prejudicial conduct is shown, the causal link is broken and the grounds cease to have a real nexus with preventive detention.

Conclusion: The detention order was based on stale and illusory grounds and was liable to be set aside.

Final Conclusion: The preventive detention could not be sustained, and the petitioner was entitled to release from custody.

Ratio Decidendi: Preventive detention is unsustainable where the alleged prejudicial activity is remote in time and no subsequent conduct is shown to maintain a live and proximate link with the order of detention.

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