India’s civic space is rated as ‘repressed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor. In recent years, the government has misused the draconian anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and other laws to keep activists behind bars and fabricate cases against activists and journalists for undertaking their work. Read more
How Supreme Court has liberalised bail jurisprudence under anti-terror law UAPA in last three years
16/08/2024
The Print / by Akashat Jain
Section 43D(5) of the Act lays down stringent provisions for grant of bail, but there has been a gradual shift in giving bail to UAPA accused over past few years.
From bombing accused K.A. Najeeb to Bhima-Koregaon accused Vernon Gonsalves, the Supreme Court has allowed bail to many accused of terrorism in the last three years. It has allowed bail despite its 2019 order which pegged the standard for allowing bail under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967 to be higher, a decision which has rarely followed. Read more
UAPA no exception to the rule on bail
15/08/2024
Hindustan Times / by HT Editorial
Taken together, SC’s pronouncements underline the draconian nature of the law. It is time this is addressed by the legislature of a mature democracy.
Time and again, the Supreme Court (SC) has pronounced that bail is the rule and jail the exception. But Tuesday’s ruling, that this holds true for special statutes such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or UAPA, is of special import. Not because the apex court reiterated its protection of the personal liberty of citizens, but because in ruling so, it implicitly outlined how the law lends itself to strategic misuse. Read more
‘Modi govt has not learned from election results’: Asaduddin Owaisi questions UAPA
Hindustan Times / by HT News Desk All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) supremo Asaduddin Owaisi on Saturday raised his concerns over the future of Muslims, tribals and Dalit people who are being held under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Taking a jibe, the Hyderabad MP said he hoped that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would learn something from the Lok Sabha election results, but they poured cold water on his expectation.
… The AIMIM chief further claimed that the stringent law became the reason for the death of 85-year-old Stan Swamy. Swamy, a tribal activist, died in judicial custody in 2021. He was arrested under the UAPA in connection with the 2018 Bhima-Koregaon violence case. Read more
Artists in Kabir Kala Manch are struggling to earn a living due to state-sponsored censorship
Kabir Kala Manch, a Pune-based protest performance art troupe, has been a target of the State since its inception in 2002. The group propagates the anti-caste and equality ideology of Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar and Marx through songs and street plays.
In 2019, police arrested three members, Ramesh Gaichor, Sagar Gorkhe and Jyoti Jagtap, in the Bhima Koregaon case for allegedly inciting communalism through songs at Elgar Parishad. Read more / read poem
The Print / by Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia
In ‘How Long Can The Moon Be Caged’, Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia look at present-day India through the lived experiences of political prisoners.
A Dalit activist we spoke to said that most people don’t encounter the state the way Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims do. She told us: ‘The state has always had a boot on our necks.’ Forget living; imagine what it takes to survive this. The boot is always pressed against minorities’ necks, making it hard to breathe, demanding that they beg for dignity every day. She added: ‘[For us] it doesn’t matter who is in power; oppression is the only thing that hasn’t changed.’ Read more
How Long Can the Moon Be Caged?
Voices of Indian Political Prisoners
Authors: Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia
Publishing Date: Aug 2023
Publisher: Pluto Press
Pages: 247 A powerful look at authoritarian India through the experiences of political prisoners
How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? includes visual testimonies and prison writings from those falsely accused of inciting the Bhima Koregaon violence, by student leaders opposing the new discriminatory citizenship law passed in 2020, and by activists from the Pinjra Tod’s movement. In bringing together these voices, the book celebrates the courage, humanity and moral integrity of those jailed for standing in solidarity with marginalised and oppressed communities. Read more / order
How the State uses ‘national security’ to spellbind the process of justice
As the J&K High Court recently reiterated, allegations of ‘terrorism’ have become a copy-paste template that the State uses to muffle dissent, but why do courts freeze the process of criminal justice on hearing ‘national security’?
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The jurisprudence has resulted in widening the coercive powers of the police and investigation agencies. Since the court only forms its assessment on broad probabilities, a pattern has emerged from the evidence submitted by the prosecution in a wide range of UAPA cases where there is a similarity in terms of enormous allegations running into thousands of pages, generalised testimonies of witnesses; most of which are protected witnesses, lack of incriminating evidence and heavy reliance on electronic evidence and literature.
There are similarities in three specific instances: those arrested in the backdrop of the 2018 Bhima-Koregaon violence, deoperationalisation of Article 370, and 2020 Northeast Delhi riots. Read more
India will and should never forget that infamous night of 25/26 June 1975, when, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared all over the country.
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Just before his arrest on 8 October 2020, in a video-message that went viral, Jesuit Fr. Stan Swamy said, “What is happening to me is not something unique happening to me alone. It is a broader process that is taking place all over the country. We are all aware how prominent intellectuals, lawyers’ writers, poets, activists, students, leaders, they are all put into jail because they have expressed their dissent or raised questions about the ruling powers of India. We are part of the process. In a way I am happy to be part of this process. I am not a silent spectator, but part of the game, and ready to pay the price whatever be it.” Read more
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Gujarat, organised an event in Ahmedabad entitled “Remembering Fr. Stan Swamy in Today’s Challenging Reality” in the memory of Fr. Stan Swamy on his third death anniversary. The event included a discussion of the new criminal laws enforced since July 1, 2024.
At the start of the event Fr. Cedric Prakash spoke about Fr. Stan Swamy, a fearless defender of tribal rights in Jharkhand, who was arrested by the NIA in 2018 in the context of the Bhima Koregaon case. Read more
At UN Human Rights Review, PEN International Questions Crackdown on Dissent in India
18/07/2024
The Wire / by The Wire Staff
The writers’ body cited a growing number of writers, journalists, academics and other critics of the government being subjected to legal harassment in the form of arbitrary arrests and prolonged detentions without trial.
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The writers’ body mentioned the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) being used as a tool to “unjustly prosecute” the government’s critics. Citing the detention of those accused in the Bhima Koregaon/Elgar Parishad case, the report highlighted the ill treatment of professor Hany Babu and poet Varavara Rao, and denial of bail despite medical grounds. Read more Read PEN International’s full report here
‘28% rise in sedition cases’: Top global NGO alliance rates India’s civil space ‘repressed’
17/07/2024
Counterview / by Rajiv Shah
Rating India’s civic space as repressed, Civicus, a global civil society alliance, in its new report submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) on the state of civic space in the country has said that the use of sedition law against the Modi government’s critics continues. “Under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sedition cases have increased by 28 per cent with over 500 cases against more than 7,000 people”, it says. Read more
McCarthyism in INDIA?: The Return of The Urban Naxal Bogey!
17/07/2024
The Crossbill / by Subbhash Gatade
Does the ruling dispensation feels that since Naxals are seen as violent gangs who claim to work for people this bogey of Urban Naxal facilitates it to target anyone who refuses to play ball.
1. ‘India Will Awake to Police Raj’!
““I am reminded of Pandit Nehru ‘s speech “At the stroke of midnight India will awake to freedom.” At the stroke of midnight night 1st July 2024 India will awake to police raj,”
There are rare occasions when a simple tweet underlines the unfolding reality in stark terms.
… Any concerned citizen can look dispassionately at the Bhima Koregaon Case (12) or the way the accused in the NE Delhi riots have been languishing in jail – and are not even getting bail – and infer where things have reached. Read more
A New Bill Shows Maharashtra Wants to Become a Police State Before Combatting Left-Wing Extremism
15/07/2024
The Wire / by Ajay K. Mehra
The proposed legislation will authorise state police and other security agencies to arrest an accused person without warrant and by extension, without letting them know of their offence.
As soon as the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024, tabled in the state legislative assembly on July 11 this year, becomes a law, the state government will have another draconian legal instrument to use against protesters, dissenters, critics and opponents. Like other such laws, this one too has strict provisions making an individual’s arrest non-bailable.
Since the need for such a law is being justified on the grounds that the “menace of Naxalism is increasing in urban areas… through Naxal frontal organisations”, dissenters being framed up as ‘urban Naxals’ is imminent. Read more
