India has a long history of gross abuse of power and deprivation of human rights of its people in the garb of laws and legality. The system of criminal jurisprudence in the country, drawn from its colonial past, is designed to instill fear of authority and subservience to the rulers among the people, now the democratically elected government since the Independence, in the scheme of the Constitution of republican India. Draconian laws have been used to suppress the movements of the oppressed and marginalized masses, the peasants, workers, minorities, Dalit and tribal. Since 2014 when the present RSS Pariwar Union Government took over, students, artists, writers, democratic rights activists, audacious professional journalists and academics have become targets of dreaded anti-terror law, the UAPA.RSS Pariwar has made the infamous dreaded UAPA known to all people compared to little knowledge about their democratic rights conferred on them by the Constitution.
Under UAPA, 10,552 arrests of mostly innocents have been made since 2014 of which 253 are convicted. Under the RSS Pariwar Union Government, the number of UAPA cases has been rising on yearly average of 14.38 per cent, all allegedly wrongful arrests. Each year between 2014 and 2020, an average, 985 cases were registered.Cases for investigation during the last seven years were sent for trials, of which 4.5 per cent are completed. As for searches and seizures under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, more than 5,422 money laundry cases were registered by ED and 3010 searches were conducted by ED on 888 complaints and rupees one lakh crore recovered from 2015 till date in 2022 compared to 112 searches on 704 complaints with nil recovery during 2005-14 of the UPA Union Government. All these could be done on unprecedented scale under the fascism only just to terrorise and instill fear among the people in our system of constitutional democratic governance. The other worrying signs are that none of such draconian actions has been against RSS Pariwar rebel rousers, incitement of open violence, communal riots and aggressive religious polarization of the people, making a bonfire of what India has been standing for like unity in diversity and celebrations of diversity as the hallmark of our democracy.
The UPA government in 2004 repealed Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) but its most draconian provisions were incorporated in the existing law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Ambiguous provisions like‘conspiracy’ and ‘act preparatory to the commission of a terrorist act’ have been included. Further oppressive amendments to law were made by the UPA Union Government following November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. Damage to property and disruption of supplies or services to community, any act which causes or is intended to cause disaffection against India, or even sympathy or support for demands or struggles of minorities nationalities were included in the definition of terrorism. In 2019, the current RSS Pariwar Union Government extended the definition of ‘terrorist’ under UAPA to include individuals allowing the government to frame any body under the Act without him/her necessarily being a member of a proscribed organization. That is why the RSS Pariwar government implicates individual journalists, activists, intellectuals, workers, farmers and other adversaries.
Constitution of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the unanimously passed National Investigative Agency Act, 2012 has already laid the frame work for the extensionof unbridled coercive arm of the union government, upturning the rights of the States. These developments especially under the present fascist union government have laid to a situation of despair just not for the victims incarcerated under UAPA, but even for the wide section of oppressed people whose struggle for even very survival is undermined, so much for people’s rights under the rule of law based system of democratic governance. Problems of those incarcerated and people with lurking fear of implications under UAPA have been further compounded beyond reprieve as of now with the courts having been morbidly reluctant in granting bail under UAPA, MLPA and NIA. The Supreme Court is blamed for having set the tone in Watali judgment in 2020 that upturns the earlier possibility under these dreaded anti-people and anti-democratic laws of bail being granted provided the judge concludes that no prima facie case exists. The Watali judgment prevents the courts from engaging in any detailed examination of the prosecution case for deciding whether the evidence relied upon by the prosecution is even sufficient or not, implying that granting of bail is rendered impossible till the end of the trial. Reliance on police investigations at the present juncture when police has lost wholesale public confidence as it is seen mostly being partisan, unfair, corrupt, extortionists and above all communal. Such worrying signs have endangered democracy beyond reprieve.
Other repressive measures that have been taken are the nation flirting with being a police state despite our Constitution pointing us the other way. We have taken on and let go of laws that restrict liberty and give all but absolute control over individual’s lives to the state (government).The Supreme Court validating ED’s near unlimited power to attach properties and detaining people has undone its previous judgment in favour of individual liberties. Now once again individual facing money laundering allegations can be jailed and once jailed will find coming out impossible even without conviction because of reversal of the burden of proof, similar to the condition validated by the Supreme Court in UAPA where people once jailed on suspicion can forget about being released. Several other laws like possession of beef, ban on inter-faith marriage between Hindus and Muslims and some others also have reversed the burden of proof on the accused. In all such repressive measures, individuals have been made weaker than the state with the judiciary conniving. The Supreme Court, the only pillar to defend, protect and preserve the Constitution and individual and collective rights of the people has acted as executive court in the recent past and for that matter caved-in to the government’s designs.
Consequences of such madness under the cloak of law are there for all people to see how the government they have elected conduct anti-people and anti-democracy. Thousands of under trialswho are entitled to bail under the ordinary criminal trials are denied bail to suffer prosecution in false cases and drummed up charges. This together with people imprisoned under a fascist design has created an atmosphere of fear and a sort of undeclared emergency where people’s fundamental rights to life, liberty, justice, equality and fraternity provided for in the Constitution are trampled upon to serve the RSS Pariwar’s Hindutwa agenda. India today stands as a dangerous place with the founding values of its secular, democratic and republican Constitution coming under flagrant assault from acts of discrimination and prejudices.
Attempts to demean, belittle and outlaw dissent, protests and the problem of growing communalism are the principal challenges the country faces today. Reclaiming truthful media, robust public institutions and vibrant democracy remain yet other major challenges to thwart the designs of the RSS Pariwar to save the Constitution and the rule of law based system of democratic governance thereunder!