Repeal UAPA

The statute has no place in a democracy

The death of the priest Stan Swamy, who was arrested in October last year under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA, offers the government an opportunity to revisit this 54-year-old law. As with the outmoded sedition laws, the UAPA is out of sync with a country that flaunts democratic credentials in international forums. The UAPA in its current form is an inversion of basic legal precepts. It enables the state to arrest and incarcerate citizens almost indefinitely. Bail under the law is extremely difficult to obtain, since courts are required to depend on police documents to presume the guilt of the accused. Recent amendments extended the pre-charge sheet custody period from 90 days to 180 days but even this time period is observed more in the breach. Activists and lawyers arrested in the 2018 Bhima-Koregaon case, under which Stan Swamy was picked up for alleged links with Maoist terror organisations, have been in prison for three years, for instance. It also allows courts to provide for the attachment of property equivalent to the proceeds of terrorism involved in the offence, which potentially reduces the economic ability of the accused to fight a legal case.

The UAPA became a terror law after amendments were introduced in 2004. But successive amendments between 2008, after the Mumbai terror attacks, and 2019 significantly expanded the scope of the Act. Ironically, the UAPA has come to resemble two previous and hugely controversial terror laws. One was the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Prevention Act (TADA), passed against the backdrop of the turmoil in Punjab, which was allowed to lapse in 1995 after a vortex of criticism by human rights activists for giving the security agencies the carte blanche to arrest and torture citizens. The second was the equally infamous Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), which allowed, among other things, confessions obtained by the police to be submitted in evidence. This law was allowed to lapse in 2004 to stem rising criticism against its misuse by some states. But the elevation of the UAPA to the status of the country’s chief terror law has enabled governments to extend, with creative variations, the spirit of TADA and POTA to stifle dissent. This became easier after a 2019 amendment that allowed the government to name individuals as terrorists. Previously, only organisations could be given this tag.

Underlining this motive is the fact that, according to the home ministry data, there has been a 72 per cent increase in the number of arrests made under the UAPA between 2015 and 2019. The same source shows that the conviction rate has only been roughly 2 per cent, underlining the weak grounds on which these cases are built. Yet, scores of activists, journalists, and students languish in jail under this law. Recently, the courts — notably the Delhi High Court — have reminded the government of the distinction between protests, which are a legitimate activity in a functioning democracy, and an act of terrorism, in granting bail to three student protesters arrested under this law. The gratuitous cruelty with which Stan Swamy was treated, even though the investigating agencies had not required his arrest, reflects the zealous overreach of state authorities that such laws encourage. India is increasingly being placed in the same league as regimes in Hungary, Turkey, Brazil, and the Philippines for its authoritarian bent. Repealing the UAPA would be a good way of salvaging the country’s reputation.