Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the laws such as UAPA had given “an impetus to probe agencies in a decisive fight against terrorism.”
He was addressing a ‘Chintan Shivir’ of Home Ministers and DGPs of States in Faridabad via video conferencing, The Hindu reported.
“The intellectual capacity should be increased to defeat the forces that could destroy the unity of the country by exploiting the emotions of the youth,” Modi said.
India’s harshest anti-terror law, UAPA, allows authorities to designate someone as a “terrorist” and detain them without producing any incriminating evidence. The much criticised law also has stringent requirements for granting bail, which means individuals often spend months, sometimes years, in jail without being found guilty.
The UAPA was first introduced in 2008 by Congress party. In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government amended the law, allowing authorities to categorise individuals as terrorists. Previously, the designation was reserved only for organisations.
The recent years have seen it used with increasing frequency. In recent years, scores of journalists, human rights activists and students mostly from Muslim community have been booked under UAPA, leading to widespread criticism of the law.
Based on data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau, less than 3% of the arrests made under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act between 2015 and 2020 have resulted in convictions.
Out of 8,371 persons arrested under India’s top terror law, only 235 were convicted in the five-year period, the People’s Union of Civil Liberties report showed, citing data from the National Crime Record Bureau.
The acquittal rate of the draconian law is 97.2%, the report said, claiming that the prosecution under UAPA lack merit in huge majority of the cases.
The loose definition of “terrorist act” under UAPA has made the provision a “draconian and undemocratic one,” said the report “UAPA: Criminalising Dissent and State Terror.”
Responding to PM Modi’s latest remarks on UAPA, the vocal Muslim leader and four time MP Asaduddin Owaisi MP tweeted: “Under #UAPA 4690 people were arrested in 2018-2020, but only 3% were convicted. PM is right, UAPA gives his govt power to jail anyone without accountability. UAPA is an evil law, it does nothing to stop terrorism.”
