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In a written answer provided by Nityanand Rai, the Minister of State for Home Affairs, on July 27, 2021, the Lok Sabha was apprised that the Delhi Police had registered nine cases under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, and arrested 34 people under the same.
The Minister was also asked the names of persons against whom cases have been registered under UAPA in 2020. To this, his written reply read, “Disclosure of further details of cases may not be in a larger public interest as the same may impact the cases.”
Questions pertaining to UAPA have been raised in the Parliament earlier. SabrangIndia had previously reported that on March 9, 2021, the then Minister of State (Home Affairs) G Kishan Reddy had revealed that as many as 1,948 persons were arrested under the UAPA in 1,226 cases registered across the country in 2019.
Out of these 34 people arrested in Delhi under UAPA in 2020, majority of them have been accused in an alleged conspiracy related to the North East Delhi Violence case. Delhi’s Special Cell had registered an FIR (59 of 2020) last year in February naming several student activists and human rights defenders. Those accused include former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain, social worker Khalid Saifi, lawyer-activist Ishrat Jahan, Jamia Millia Islamia students-Meeran Haider, Gulfisha Fatima, Safoora Zargar and Asif Iqbal Tanha, Pinjra Tod members Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Dr. Umar Khalid, Shafa-ur-Rehman, Athar Khan, Saleem Malik, Taslim Ahmed and Shadab Ahmed. One Faizan Khan, a North East Delhi resident and a SIM card seller was another person accused in FIR 59 under UAPA, and arrested on July 29 last year.
Zargar, Narwal, Kalita, Tanha and Faizan Khan are the only five accused persons who are out on bail currently. Procuring bail under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is difficult as the legislation provides for indefinite detention of the alleged accused once the court is satisfied that the investigation agencies need additional time to investigate the terror related crimes.
Recently some cases have come to light where people have been discharged of UAPA charges after prolonged incarceration. One Bashir Ahmad Baba, a resident of Srinagar, was charged by the Gujarat Police in 2010 of having links with terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen. He was reportedly acquitted in June this year after spending almost 11 years in jail.
Similarly, two men were released from Taloja Jail in June after being acquitted of UAPA charges. Mohammed Ilyas (38) and Mohammed Irfan (33) had been in jail since August 31, 2012, after being accused of having alleged links with terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
The answer may be read here:
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