(This story was originally published in 2018 and was later updated to include more recent developments like the Watali judgment and Umar Khalid’s arrest. It is being republished on 15 June 2021 in light of three UAPA accused – Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita, and Asif Iqbal Tanha – being granted bail by the Delhi High Court.)
On the night of 13 September 2020, activist Umar Khalid was arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly playing a role in the organisation of the Delhi riots in February 2020, based on his speeches and involvement in the anti-CAA protests that swept the country from December 2019 onwards.
Khalid is the latest among activists, intellectuals and other dissenters to be accused of such a role in the supposed conspiracy behind the Delhi riots, and booked for it under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 (UAPA), following similar arrests of Meenan Haider, Safoora Zargar, Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal, Khalid Saifi and many others.
The UAPA has also been invoked this year against Kashmiri journalists like Masrat Zahra and Gowhar Geelani, over their work in Jammu & Kashmir.
It has been over two years now since the UAPA became a household name after the arrests began in the ‘Bhima Koregaon’ case, which has seen prominent human rights advocates, activists, lawyers and intellectuals accused of instigating the violence in Bhima Koregaon in January 2018, and being involved in Maoist plots.
The accused in that case, arrested and charged under the UAPA, include advocates Sudha Bharadwaj and Surendra Gadling, lawyer and author Arun Ferreira, revolutionary poet Varavara Rao, as well as activists Gautam Navlakha and Vernon Gonsalves – the number of such persons arrested recently went up to 15, including DU professor Hany Babu and activists from the Kabir Kala Manch.