Bengaluru, Jan. 2 -- The Madras high court has taken a strong exception to the Tamil Nadu government's indiscriminate use of preventive detention laws, and warned that such "draconian powers" cannot be deployed to "silence dissenting voices or bypass ordinary criminal law."

In an order passed on December 30, 2025, the court reiterated that personal liberty remains the State's foremost constitutional obligation and directed the home secretary to initiate departmental action against officials who invoke the Goondas Act against citizens for "extraneous reasons" in an erroneous and mechanical manner, and to prosecute them if necessary.

A bench of justices SM Subramaniam and P Dhanabal granted interim bail to a YouTube investigative journali...