“The UAPA [Unlawful Activities Prevention Act] has been amended in the past keeping in view the requirement. Presently no amendments in the UAPA are under consideration,” Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai told the Lok Sabha on December 14, 2021 in answer to a series of questions regarding the law.
Various Opposition leaders from Congress, BJD, AITC, TDP including Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and even a BJP MP Vishnu Dayal Ram had enquired about the number of people arrested under UAPA and possible amendments to the law.
Specifically, they asked whether the central government planned to amend the Act following evidence about the large number of acquittals and thus prevent harassment of innocent people by abuse of law.
However, Rai replied to this query by saying, “Conviction is an outcome of an elaborate judicial process and is dependent on various factors, such as, duration of trial, appraisal of evidence, examination of witnesses, etc. There are adequate constitutional, institutional and statutory safeguards including inbuilt safeguards in the UAPA itself, to prevent misuse of the law.”
MPs also asked about the number of individuals including students below 25 years, who were arrested, granted bail, convicted, released and their average period of detention after arrest between 2018 and 2020. Additionally, they asked about custodial deaths.
Using the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2020 data, the Ministry showed that 1,421 people were arrested under UAPA, 1,948 people were arrested in 2019 and 1,321 people in 2020 – the pandemic year. While, 35 people were convicted in 2018, 34 people were convicted in 2019 and then a whopping 80 people were convicted ii 2020.
Further, the Ministry did not have data about 25-year-olds arrested under UAPA. But while 755 people below 30 years of age were arrested in 2018, the number rose to 1,096 people in 2019, and 650 in 2020.
“During 2018-20 only one case was registered under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, in 2019, in the State of Odisha and that was in the district Balasore. The data regarding the period of detention is not maintained by NCRB,” said Rai.
The entire data can be seen in Annexure I and II of the following document.
Many like him continue to suffer behind bars. Sabrang India’s sister organisation Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) maintains a record of such cases on its Human Rights Defenders page.
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