[India’s government under Prime
Minister Narendra Modi has jailed thousands of people through a statute that
critics say is aimed at silencing dissent.]
By Emily Schmall and Sameer Yasir
Their release on bail in June after
spending a year in custody was unusual given the accusations they face: They
have been charged with terrorism.
Natasha
Narwal and Devangana Kalita, student activists, were imprisoned under
an antiterror law with roots in the British colonial era that critics say the
Indian government is increasingly using to silence dissent.
Under Prime Minister
Narendra Modi, those charged through the antiterrorism law, called
the Unlawful
Activities Prevention Act, have typically spent years languishing in jail
before their trials have even begun. Thousands of people — including poets,
political organizers and even a Catholic priest — have been jailed. The law is
increasingly being challenged by the courts, which say it is an abuse of power.
The law “makes you guilty unless
and until you are able to prove yourself innocent,” said Ms. Narwal, a founder
of the women’s student collective Pinjra Tod, or Break the Cage.
“Coming out of jail in one year,”
she added, “is a miracle.”
Mr. Modi’s government has developed
a playbook to police dissent and free speech, criminal justice experts have
said. Since taking office in 2014, Mr. Modi has increasingly relied on laws
that give the authorities greater powers to detain people and act against those
accused of inciting hatred against the government.
The Modi government in 2019 gave
itself greater access
to people’s online data. Last year, it proposed a law that would make
encrypted messages “traceable,” prompting
a lawsuit from the messaging service WhatsApp, which said it violated
Indians’ constitutional right to privacy.
Officials have succeeded in
persuading social media giants like Facebook and Twitter to shut down millions
of accounts in India for a wide range of perceived offenses against citizens
and the government. The authorities also routinely turn off internet services
during protests, pushing India to the top of a list of global offenders tracked by the
watchdog group Access Now.
The antiterror law, which gives
judges the right to extend pretrial detention almost indefinitely, has been
among Mr. Modi’s most repressive tools.
During the prime minister’s tenure,
the number of cases filed under the antiterror law has surged. More than 8,300
people have been arrested and jailed in the last five years, according to
official data. There are no reliable official statistics about the use of the
law before 2014, but legal experts say the number of cases was negligible.
The government told Parliament in
August that only about 2 percent of cases registered under the law from 2016 to
2019 resulted in a conviction. But even without a conviction, people detained
under the law can be jailed for years before their cases go to trial.
“It appears that in its anxiety to
suppress dissent and in the morbid fear that matters may get out of hand, the
state has blurred the line between the constitutionally guaranteed right to
protest and terrorist activity,” the Delhi High Court said in a hearing in June
that resulted in the release on bail of Ms. Narwal and two fellow activists.
“If such blurring gains traction,”
the court continued, “democracy would be in peril.”
Kanchan Gupta, a government
spokesman, defended the law, saying it helps the government ensure the
“security of its citizens and protect them from adversaries of the nation.”
Of the people detained under the
antiterror law, the case of the
Rev. Stan Swamy has stoked particular outrage. Father Swamy, a Jesuit
priest and activist with Parkinson’s disease, died in July at 84 while in
custody. He was accused of using inflammatory speech and supporting a Maoist
rebel insurgency that has been active in India for decades. He was the
oldest person in India accused of terrorism.
Father Swamy’s death came after his
repeated requests for bail on medical grounds were denied. An independent
investigation by a digital forensics firm suggested that his computer, which
Indian investigators had seized, had been hacked and planted with files. But neither his poor
health nor the conclusions of that report was enough to win him bail.
After Father Swamy’s death, Justice
Deepak Gupta, a former Supreme Court judge, said that the antiterrorism law was
being misused, and that courts should draw up clear guidelines.
“Are we human?” he asked. “The
U.A.P.A. should not remain in this form.”
The various iterations of the law
have been contentious for more than a century. Officers under the British Raj
introduced a precursor to it in 1908 to quell independence movements. In 1967,
when India was fresh from wars with Pakistan and China, Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi introduced the U.A.P.A. to punish groups for “sowing discord.” It
prompted an uproar among lawmakers, and a watered-down version was passed.
Over the decades, the law has been
amended to address terrorist activity. Investigators relied on it in 2008 to
arrest people suspected in the Mumbai terror attack.
In 2019, Mr. Modi’s government
further amended the law to give officials more power to make arrests on
terrorism charges
“It strikes at individual liberty
and grants government powers to name all and sundry as terrorists,” said
Dushyant Dave, an Indian lawyer. “There is evidence to suggest that those
arrested under the law have been targeted for their political beliefs.”
The students’ release on bail in
June signaled growing scrutiny of the government’s use of the law.
Ms. Narwal and 18 others face
charges for their roles in protests against
a divisive citizenship
law pushed through by the Modi government that excludes Muslims from a
program offering South Asian migrants in India a fast track to citizenship.
One protest
against the law last year in a working-class neighborhood of New Delhi
descended into clashes between Hindus and Muslims. More
than two dozen people were killed.
The police arrested more than 1,800
people who they say played a role in the riots. No one has yet been convicted.
During court hearings, judges have criticized the quality of the police’s
witness testimony and evidence.
“It is further painful to note that
in a large number of cases of riots, the standard of investigation is very poor,”
Justice Vinod Yadav, a Delhi high court judge, said in August.
In the order granting Ms. Narwal
bail in June, a judge questioned the validity of the police force’s case.
India’s clogged court system means
the wheels of justice turn slowly. The antiterrorism law slows things down
further.
In May 2020, Ms. Narwal and the two
fellow student activists were taken into custody. Because of pandemic
restrictions, each spent the first 10 days in solitary confinement
A judge quickly ruled that Ms.
Narwal had been exercising her democratic rights when she participated in
protests earlier that year.
But shortly after, the police announced fresh charges: attempted murder, terrorism and
organizing protests that instigated deadly
religious violence. Ms. Narwal, 32, who has said she is innocent, was
returned to her cell.
Ms. Narwal waited in Tihar, a
maximum-security prison, for six months before she was granted her first bail
hearing. Prosecutors filed an 18,000-page charge sheet, which took the high
court another six months and 30 hearings to process, according to her lawyer,
Adit Pujari.
“In a sense, the government had a
victory,” Mr. Pujari said. “If she was outside, she could have been involved
with more protests and spearheaded more issues.”
For now, Ms. Narwal has returned to
her doctoral studies in Delhi, but the case against her could continue for
years. The Supreme Court is considering a petition to revoke her bail.
“We ourselves are prepared for the
long haul because the law itself is so stringent,” Ms. Narwal said. “You are
almost rendered powerless until your trial completes.”
Sameer Yasir reported from
Srinagar, Kashmir.