A special court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has said the colonial legacy of the sedition law cannot be overlooked while hoping that activist-MLA Akhil Gogoi’s case based on insufficient evidence would be an exception for the investigation agency that the country expects to set high standards.
NIA Special Judge Pranjal Das made the observations while acquitting Mr. Gogoi and three others who were jailed on sedition charge and allegedly fomenting violence during the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests in December 2019.
“Though the law of sedition continues in our statute book, its colonial legacy cannot be overlooked. Nevertheless, as long as it remains on the statute book in the present form, for enforcing the law on sedition, it is desirable for the investigating authorities to be continually trained to conform to the parameters of the law of sedition…,” the judge observed.
“This is to ensure that while enforcing this penal law by police and other investigating agencies, the ambit of sedition does not get stretched beyond permissible limits imposed by the Supreme Court,” he noted.
The court had high expectations from a premier investigating agency like the NIA, entrusted with the profoundly important task of protecting the country and its citizens from the menace of terrorism. “The court hopes and expects that, such high standards will be upheld, for sake of the country and this one will be just an exception,” he stated in the order.
Underlining that the NIA could not provide sufficient evidence against Mr. Gogoi, the court said India needed a well-drafted, strict and effective anti-terrorism law and would remain safe from terrorism when real terrorist crimes were promptly and effectively investigated.
The prosecution of terrorists should be correctly adjudicated before conviction and sentencing within the most reasonable possible time, the order said. “If a criminal justice system, for some reasons, is unable to give bail to an accused, his trial should preferably get completed within one year, so that his constitutional and human rights of presumption of innocence and speedy trial is not violated,” it read.
UAPA use
While enforcing the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, the law enforcement agencies have to take care to see that the enforcement remained within the strict parameters of the law and did not get stretched beyond permissible limits imposed by the statute itself and the principles laid down by the higher courts, it said.
“They [enforcement officials] also should be sensitised and trained continually in this,” the judge said, underlining two serious consequences if precaution is not taken.
“Persons who are not really guilty of terrorism or who might be guilty of other penal offences, might get unnecessary roped in within the ambit of the stringent anti-terrorism law, with its limited scope for bail,” he pointed out.
“Secondly, if the enforcement of the anti-terrorism law gets stretched beyond permissible limits, then over a period of time, it might carry the risk of diluting the requite continuous focus of the anti-terrorism law itself, on the real terrorist crimes, thereby weakening the fight against terrorism,” he added.
The court said accusations against Mr Gogoi other than those pertaining to Maoists, “if accepted as true”, would almost constitute an organised crime of extortion, cattle smuggling, blackmailing people with honey trapping, criminal intimidation. etc. “The subject areas of these alleged activities would be outside the jurisdiction of this court,” the order stated.
Photo without details
The court found fault with a photograph purportedly of Mr. Gogoi in a Maoist camp in the Saranda jungle of Jharkhand “without mentioning any time, date, month of taking such photograph in 2009”.
“…if the photo was taken in 2009 as indicated at a place in the case diary, the investigating authority took inordinately long time to bring it before the court… the date is important because this organisation – CPI [Maoist] was banned in law as a terrorist organisation only with effect from 22.06.2009,” the court said.
