Citizens for Justice and Peace
Terror Laws under a Proto-Fascist Regime Draconian laws are repealed when citizens' protests multiply and grow
18-Sep-2021
Senior counsel, Mihir Desai delivered this lecture of September 5, 2021 at an online event organised by the Gauri Memorial Trust and Citizens for Justice and Peace. CJP is happy to bring the entire text of the lecture here. It is a pleasure as well as a privilege to be invited to present this paper…
Why has India still not ratified UN Convention against torture? India still does not have a law condemning torture
23-Jul-2021
What continues to remain amiss in the Indian legislations is the definition, and subsequent condemnation of torture by public officials. A right against torture is nothing but an affirmation of Right to Life under Article 21. However, enforcing fundamental rights is a much more tedious task than invoking the provisions of the specific law, which…
HRD Ishrat Jahan awaits bail in Delhi Violence Case Incarcerated for close to 15 months, this lawyer-activist, charged under the draconian UAPA, has applied for bail
23-Jul-2021
Advocate, Ishrat Jahan, has been booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, for her alleged role in the North East Delhi violence of 2020, when in fact she was a pro-active in organizing the anti-CAA/NPR-NRIC protests that rocked Delhi in December 2020-January 2021 in the area of Khureji. She was among the first to…
Ishrat Jahan, fiery activist moves court for bail: UAPA Case For 15 months after she has been in jail in the Delhi 2020 Violence
22-Jul-2021
Ishrat Jahan is an advocate, activist and a political leader, numerous photographs of her over the years, always show her smiling. Often surrounded by groups of people, sometimes at interfaith gatherings, or speaking at a public function, or simply surrounded by school kids, Ishrat Jahan always has a smile on her face in these photos.…
Protecting and Promoting Minority Rights in India’s Criminal Justice System: Need for a Special Law Paper in honour of Justice PB Sawant
09-Jul-2021
Minority rights in India’s criminal justice system (CJS) are in dire straits as revealed graphically in institutional murder of Father Stan Swamy, the tribal rights activist. The indifference of the authorities to end such horrific human rights violations has been graphically brought out in several recent reports. The persisting violence and crimes against the minority…
Delhi HC’s fitting reply to the criminalisation of dissent and protest From the Secretary’s Desk
17-Jun-2021
June 15 2021 brought us the three judgements granting regular bail to three young activist academics, Asif Tanha, Devangana Kalita and Natasha Narwal, in the infamous cases alleging “conspiracy” into the February 2020 targeted violence in North East Delhi. The significance of the substantively reasoned orders will not merely grant these three persons their freedom…
A new hope: Student activists charged under UAPA get bail Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Tanha Iqbal were accused in the Delhi Violence conspiracy case
16-Jun-2021
Securing bail under Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 is an anomaly but not on June 15, when the Delhi High Court granted bail to student activist Asif Iqbal Tanha and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students Natasha and Devangana in the North East Delhi Violence case. All three have been implicated in FIR No. 59 of…
Creative understanding of UAPA grants freedom from jail for activists: Delhi HC Orders in Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha’s case come as a whiff of fresh air
16-Jun-2021
Over the past few years, Indian civil society has been badly hit by use of laws such as Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), sedition, FCRA, NSA, AFSPA* and various other similar laws. UAPA is possibly the most extreme due to its stigmatising effect and the Himalayan problem of getting bail, used wantonly in a large…
Bail under UAPA: Does the new SC judgment offer a ray of hope? CJP compares two SC judgements on bail under UAPA: Watali, 2019, and Najeeb, 2021
19-Feb-2021
The Supreme Court recently passed a judgment upholding Kerala High Court’s order granting bail to an accused charged under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). This judgment has set a new precedent for consideration of bail of persons charged under UAPA, the number of which has been on the rise since the 2019 amendment…
Repeal UAPA: End targeting of minorities and dissenters Day one of a three-day consultation on inhuman provisions of anti-terror laws
28-Jan-2021
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) along with a hundred organisations including the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) organised a three-day consultation on the implementation of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). The session began on January 20, 2021, and here’s what transpired on day one. Repeal of the UAPA and the National…
Understanding the right to default bail It is an extension of Article 21: Right to Life and Personal Liberty
16-Oct-2020
The Supreme Court of India has held that there is a fundamental right granted to an accused person to be released on bail once the conditions of the first proviso to Section 167(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure are fulfilled. Moreover, life and personal liberty of an individual must be paramount. The three-judge Bench…
What does it take to secure bail under UAPA? A look into how different courts deal with bail applications under UAPA and the rationale behind them
06-Oct-2020
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) is a national security legislation that gives unbridled powers to the government authorities to detain an individual basis vague and arbitrary grounds, for example “in the interest of national security”. The haphazard manner in which the charges under UAPA are being invoked has led to several persons being detained…
न्याय, सुधारक होना चाहिए, दण्ड देने वाला नहीं : तीस्ता सेतलवाड़ सीजेपी मौत की सज़ा का विरोध करता है
26-Oct-2018
हम अपने सम्पूर्ण प्रयास और पूरे भरोसे के साथ इस बात पर अपनी प्रतिबद्धता ज़ाहिर करते हैं, कि न्याय, सुधार के लिए एक उपकरण है, प्रतिशोध के लिए नहीं. पिछले 15 वर्षों में, हमने 2002 के गुजरात जनसंहार से संबंधित विभिन्न मामलों का 68 से अधिक अदालतों में नेतृत्व किया है. इन मामले में हमने सफलतापूर्वक 168 लोगों…
Punjab Blasphemy Law Unconstitutional and Undemocratic Desecrating religious texts to carry same punishment as murder!
13-Oct-2018
The Punjab Assembly has recently passed a bill for an addition to IPC clause 295 to give life imprisonment for any ‘injury, damage or sacrilege’ of four religious books, (Guru Granth Sahib, Koran, Bible and Geeta) ‘with the intention to hurt the religious feelings of the people’. This is the first time in independent India…
Malaysia to abolish death penalty, revoke sedition law
12-Oct-2018
Malaysia will abolish the death penalty, the New York Times reported. The country’s minister of law, Liew Vui Keong, told reporters, “All death penalty will be abolished. Full stop”. Malaysia’s government is also set to revoke the Sedition Act, a law dating back to the colonial era that has previously been employed against critics and…