India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act: Draconian Surveillance and Suppression of Dissent
By Snehal Walia
In April 2020, a 27-year-old pregnant woman named Safoora Zargar was arrested and sent to Tihar Jail for her alleged association with the Northeast Delhi riots in India. While several nations throughout the world are trying to deal with the lockdown post COVID-19 outbreak, the Indian government has been aggressively arresting several activists and students, including prominent names like former JNU student leader Umar Khalid, and peasants’ leader Akhil Gogoi who were associated with the protests against the recent changes in the citizenship laws in India. The law permitting these arrests is the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) of 1967, which has been widely criticized for its repressive nature. These arrests have been taking places despite the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights requesting states to release “every person detained without sufficient legal basis, including political prisoners, and those detained for critical, dissenting views.”
In July 2019, The Minister of Home Affairs, Amit Shah introduced the UAPA Amendment bill in the Lok Sabha, which was passed despite the firm opposition by several political parties. The bill dealt with central government’s power to designate an individual as a terrorist and the investigational authority of the National Investigation Agency (NIA). It is not the first time that the UAPA has been amended.. The UAPA has been amended to expand the definition of “unlawful activities”, “terrorist act” etc. and police’s power of interrogation in 2004, 2008 and 2012. Amit Shah, while defending the 2019 Bill in his speech, said “UAPA has a provision for the government to designate an individual as a terrorist if he or she is a terrorist worker or takes part in a terrorist act. Can there be two opinions about this?”
However, the government has failed to understand that UAPA gives a vague definition of the term “terrorist act” which can give birth to not two or three but umpteen number of opinions about what a terrorist act is. The definition includes any act that is ‘likely to threaten’ or ‘likely to strike terror in people’ and empowers the government to arrest a person without the actual commission of a “terrorist act” and in turn, shift the burden of proving innocence on the accused. This shifting of this burden is a blatant violation of the rights of the accused laid down in the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights Additionally, the 2019 amendment empowered the government to designate an individual as a terrorist before a trial takes place and the individual gets convicted. This consequence of this act is that a person will carry a label of terrorist before a trial-a label that is hard to shed,
Additionally, Shah also stated that individuals who possess or propagate terrorist literature or philosophy must be designated as terrorists. However, a book or any other piece of literature that one might read as a piece of dissent against the government or for the protection of rights of a particular community, religion, caste etc. against the exploitation by the government might be regarded as terrorist literature by the government in the absence of a definition of “terrorist literature.” Given a long history of instances of the government slapping sedition cases on individuals and its obsession with labelling individuals as anti-national at the drop of a hat for their support to certain movements or ideologies, one cannot be sure that the government will not use the UAPA to exploit the situation to not only suppress dissent but also label it as terrorism.
It is important to note that the government has also introduced a controversial Personal Data Protection Bill in December 2019, which has been criticized for granting excessive surveillance powers to the government and has yet to be passed. It does not come as a surprise that the bill has been criticized for its potential to create an Orwellian era in India. The provisions of this legislation coupled with the amendments in the UAPA pave the way for a situation where the government can monitor and restrict any kind of act that does not suit its narrative or simply, does not seem desirable. To understand the implications in a simpler way, imagine a situation where a person has been booked under the UAPA for his alleged involvement in what the government considers a “terrorist act.” The government can further access that person’s personal information without his consent and easily use or even manipulate the collected data to make a case against him and, shift the burden of proof on him.
If the shortcomings of the provisions of the UAPA are not enough to prove the draconian character of this law, then the statistics make a strong case against the UAPA. The National Crime Records Bureau data, as quoted by Kapil Sibal, shows that of 1,209 pending cases under the UAPA there were only 76 completed trials with a total of 11 convictions in 2015. The rate of acquittal is at 85.5% and reflects the misuse of the law.
The government after all is a political party in power, which is bound to function with its own bias and ideology. Hence, the UAPA can be used as an effective tool to suppress any kind of dissent against the government, which will have a chilling effect on one of the world’s largest democracies. The government in no way should adopt a lenient attitude towards terrorists and terrorist acts. However it needs to be emphasized that it is high time that the government paid attention to the long-term implications of frequent arrests and the designation of innumerable individuals as terrorists before convicting them under this tyrannical law. Further, it is time for the government to understand the importance of dissent and opposition in a country, which owes its independence and existence to a long history of dissent and struggle for freedom.
Snehal Walia is an undergraduate student at Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab. She has a keen interest in Constitutional Law, Technology Law and Sports Law and is currently working as a Research Fellow with Myna Mahila Foundation in India. She can be reached at snehalwalia2000@gmail.com.
“India!” by LivinTheDream is licensed under CC BY-2.0.
