UAPA punishment without trial!

By M.Y.Siddiqui

The Supreme Court’s orders of May 15, 2024 in the midst of the ongoing General Elections to the Lok Sabha (House of the People), declaring arrest of the founder Editor-in-Chief of the NewsClick channel, Prabir Purkayastha invalid and illegal under the most draconian anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, as amended to date, and freeing him immediately from incarceration is a slap in the face of the fascist Union government. The UAPA, being the most draconian of all such anti-people and anti-democratic laws, has wrecked the lives of hundreds of thousands of people across the country. The Muslim minority and those fighting for the rights of the oppressed, the students, political activists, academics, journalists, civil society proponents, lawyers, and tribals have been its foremost victims.

When UAPA is used against journalists who investigate and report on a range of issues, it seeks to criminalise their legitimate work and stigmatise them as “terrorists“ having a chilling effect on the professional at large. UAPA was brought to curb terror activities. Its punishing process is designed to make jail the rule and bail the exception. Cases continue literally for decades. Over the last decade, patriotism, national security and alleged anti-national activities have been included in the array of charges in the UAPA arsenal, as the arrest of Prabir Purkayastha shows.

In “Behind Bars”, Free Speech Collective’s study of a decade of journalists arrested in India (210-2020), 154 journalists in India were arrested, detained, interrogated or served show cause notices for their professional work and a little over 40 percent of these instances were in 2020. Nine foreign journalists faced deportation, arrest, interrogations, and denied entry into India. In democracy, journalists are messengers of news and information. Silencing them will silence their reportage and commentary of important issues and the democratic rights of citizens to access information without fear is compromised.

The enormous physical, mental, social and economic sufferings of the victims and their families only get compounded by the listlessness or even the complicity of the very institutions one looks up to for relief. For example, of the 20 different persons booked under the UAPA in the infamous FIR 59/2020—all but two among them were Muslims, mostly students and known social and political activists. Of these, all except three continue to remain in jail. In several cases, the trial courts have held the police responsible for “vague evidence and general allegations,” a “shoddy probe”, and an “absolutely evasive” and “lackadaisical” attitude.

Achieving bail under the UAPA has been made next to impossible with the courts leaving much to be desired in listening to and hearing of the bail applications. In the High Court of Delhi, bail petitions of nine accused were listed for hearing between 34 and 60 times. In the case of six, hearings were concluded and judgments reserved, but judgments never came. The victims accused continued to remain in prison to their exacerbated trauma. It seemed nothing short of a tragic comedy when the Delhi High Court took a deep dive in elucidating what “Inquilab” implied in the slogan “Inquilab Zindabad” while hearing the bail plea of Umar Khalid. The continuance of such situations can have ominous consequences for our polity and society ruining the lives and livelihoods of millions of people.

The UAPA is anti-people and undemocratic and forms part of the design of the fascist Union government to lean more and more towards implementing more oppressive and repressive laws. A person charged under the UAPA suffers in jail for several years and then gets acquitted after the prosecution fails to prove his guilt. This is happening in many cases now. It is learnt about 97 percent arrests are made without any evidence. Arrests under the UAPA rose by 23 per cent as in December 2022, according to the latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). As in October 2023, the number of journalists charged under the UAPA was 16, indicating the perilous state of free speech in India. When UAPA is used against journalists who seek bail  under the UAPA, get no relief from the courts, their ability to ask questions diminished,  the government crushes them with iron hands to evade accountability.

The outcome of the ongoing General Elections shall have a bearing on the future of democracy in India as perhaps no other General Elections have done till date. However, democracy entails far more than changing the billboard of the ruling coalition. Ability of the citizens to safeguard their rights and use them as an instrument to improve their lives and command accountability from the rulers is important for democratizing society. It is important that people understand the issues confronting them as they go to vote. In this context, the UAPA has to be repealed and all the framed cases foisted under it may have to be withdrawn if democracy has to survive.

Prabir Purkaystha is a journalist of repute, who having served as Chief Engineer Power, by instinctive inclination is a journalist for sheer love for the media profession. A gentleman par excellence, his NewsClick channels have had emerged truthful in its profession to call a spade a spade without mincing the words, which the fascist government did not like and framed him in false case under the trumped up make believe charge. Well-meaning people of India are relieved that a brilliant and audacious journalist is released!

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