On September 16, the Rajya Sabha was faced with questions related to persons detained under national security laws. It is common knowledge that the arrests that have been taking place under anti-terror laws such as the National Security Act (NSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) have been on the rise. In the wake of these rampant arrests, Members of Parliament, namely, Binoy Viswam, Chhaya Verma, Sukhram Yadav and Vishabhar Nishad have raised questions related to the use of these laws and the status of arrests.
Accordingly, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has provided data as collated and compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NRCB). Albeit, the NCRB data dates back to 2018 and the 2019 report of ‘Crimes in India’ is yet to be released. Hence, real time data is not available.
NSA
In 2017-18, the NSA was used the most by Madhya Pradesh followed by Uttar Pradesh. In 2017, MP detained 300 persons under NSA and out of these 167 are still in custody and in 2018, it detained 495 persons out of which 162 are still in custody.
Similarly, UP detained 171 persons under NSA in 2018 out of which 78 are still in custody; and in 2018, UP detained 167 out of which 110 are still in custody. As of 2018, 563 persons detained under NSA in 2017-18 are still in custody.
UAPA
As per NCRB’s 2018 report, between 2016-18 a total of 3,974 persons were arrested under UAPA and 3,005 cases were registered. Out of these, only 821 chargesheets were filed in three years, i.e. 2016-18.
In the year 2017 and 2018, the number of chargesheets submitted within one to two years are 92 and 52 and chargesheets filed after lapse of two years are 31 and 10 respectively.
The Parliamentary responses may be read here.
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