JOIN USUP, Tamil Nadu record massive jump in UAPA cases in five years
Six states, including Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and Assam, account for around 87 per cent of the arrests made under the contentious Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in the five years since 2015, according to an analysis.
UP saw a massive jump in arrests -- by 19 times --from 26 people arrested under UAPA in 2015 to 498 in 2019 while Tamil Nadu detentions under UAPA rose from just two in 2015 to a massive 308 in 2019.
The analysis of data in NCRB's Crime in India reports also threw up an interesting fact -- Manipur arrested 2,158 people in 2,426 UAPA cases in five years while UP put 1,397 people behind the bars in just 343 cases under UAPA during this period. Assam has 1,003 arrests in 995 cases during this period.
Though on top of the list of arrested people, Manipur reported a declining trend -- 692 people arrested in 2015 fell to 386 in 2019, a drop of 44.22 per cent.
Altogether, 7,050 people were arrested under UAPA during this period in 6,104 cases registered during the period.
There has been a 72.7 per cent rise in arrests -- 1,128 in 2015 as against 1,948 in 2019 -- while the corresponding rise in the number of cases is 36.38 per cent -- 897 to 1,226, showing that the number of people arrested under UAPA was much sharper than the rise in the number of cases registered.
At the same time, 10 states and union territories, including Haryana, Tripura and Sikkim, incidentally have not made a single detention under the law, which activists describe as "draconian", during this period.
"The trend appears to indicate that the draconian provisions of the UAPA are increasingly being used against citizens who have no previous association with extremism or militancy. The popular belief that the law establishment is using UAPA to curb dissent and voices of protest or simply to harass human rights defenders and social justice activists appears to be well supported by the data published by NCRB," Nayak told DH.The analysis by transparency activist Venkatesh Nayak comes against the backdrop of the renewed interest in the law that is alleged to be used often by the governments in recent times to curb dissent.
The analysis showed that Manipur had the highest number of 2,158 arrests followed by Uttar Pradesh (1,397) and Assam (1,003). Bihar (567), Jharkhand (516) and Jammu and Kashmir (505) are the states which also have high number of arrests under UAPA.
Besides Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the biggest increase in the number of persons arrested under UAPA were in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand. Jharkhand reported 44 arrestees in 2015 but the number rose to 202 in 2019 with a dip reported only in 2017 (57) while Jammu and Kashmir had only 10 people arrested in 2015, which rose to 227 in 2019.
Analysis of south Indian states showed that the case rose exponentially in the past five years – from 43 in 2015 to 335 in 2019 – basically due to Tamil Nadu registering 270 cases two years ago.
Tamil Nadu has the highest number of cases (278) and arrests (328) followed by Kerala 175 145 cases and 85 arrests. Karnataka has 22 cases and 14 arrests during the five year period while Andhra Pradesh has 27 cases and 13 arrests, Telangana one case and five arrests. Puducherry and Lakshadweep did not register a single UAPA case during this period.