Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978

The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978 (PSA) is a preventive detention law under which a person is taken into custody to prevent them from acting harmfully against "the security of the state or the maintenance of the public order" in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (now a union territory). Whereas PSA applies only to Jammu and Kashmir, it is very similar to the National Security Act that is used by the central and other state governments of India for preventive detention.

It was introduced by the then-Chief Minister, Sheikh Abdullah, in 1978 to ostensibly stop the smuggling of timber. However, the political motives behind the law became clearer when Sheikh Abdullah used it for the first time against political rivals. Since its usage in the late 1970s, it is still being used today for "the security of the state". Following the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, PSA was one of the state laws which was retained under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act of 2019.

In 2015, the government made public the figure of 16,329 persons having been detained under the act since 1988, nearly all from Kashmir. National Crime Records Bureau records only 16 women detentions in the period 1995–2008. In February 2020, a petition was filed in the Supreme Court of India by Bhim Singh of the Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party terming PSA "as dead and ultra vires".