On June 22, a 44-year-old Kashmiri man Bashir Ahmad Baba reunited with his family 11 years after he was “framed” in a case in Gujarat and jailed for the “crime he never committed.” The acquittal and release of Baba is yet another instance of ‘misuse of UAPA’ in Kashmir, where the anti-terror law has been frequently used to jail people.
Auqib Javeed | TwoCircles.net
SRINAGAR – “Who will return back my youth? How will they compensate me for my wrongful imprisonment?” These are the questions that 44-year-old Bashir Ahmad Baba poses to journalists who visit his house in Srinagar’s Rainawari to know about his jailed life.
On June 22, Baba reunited with his family 11 years after he was “framed” in a case in Gujarat and jailed for the “crime he never committed.” He was welcomed by his relatives and family members at his home.
Baba was arrested in 2010 by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad on accusations of being a Hizbul Mujahideen associate and recruiting Muslim youths to send them to Pakistan for training and spread “terrorist activities” in India.
However, after 11 years, a court in Gujarat acquitted Baba of all charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and ordered his release.
Baba was booked under Unlawful Activities Act section 16, 17, 18, 20 and IPC section 120B.
According to a media report, Additional Sessions Judge rejected the Anti-Terrorism Squad’s case that Baba was associated with the banned outfit Hizbul Mujahideen.
Hizbul-Mujahideen is a militant group operating in Jammu and Kashmir. Its goal is to separate Kashmir from India and merge it with Pakistan.
Baba is yet another Kashmiri, who became the victim of a “failed Indian policy” of “framing” innocent youth of Kashmir in “fabricated cases” and forcing them to languish behind bars for years.
As per reports, scores of Kashmiris who have spent decades in multiple jails across India were acquitted after the courts found them not guilty.
These people spend the precious time of their youth in jails. However, later on, most of them walked free and innocent of the charges brought against them.
In the last few years, several Kashmiris have been released after Courts in India declared them innocent.
At his home in Rainawari, Baba told TwoCircles.net before he was arrested he was running a computer institute in the area and was also working as assistant project manager of a cleft centre run by NGO Kimaya, and had gone to Ahmedabad 0n February 19, 2010, for training.
“The training started on February 21 and I was planning to come back on February 27. However, during one night, Gujarat’s Anti-Terrorism Squad and Intelligence Bureau raided our apartment and detained me and my colleague Dr Vijay Anand,” Baba told TwoCircles.net adding that Dr Anand was released the next day.
He said he was told that he will be released after questioning. However, he was later booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and was lodged in Gujarat’s Baroda jail.
Baba had never thought that he would be jailed and would have to live without his family, nearly 1800 kilometres away from his home in Srinagar.
“This was traumatizing for me. I would continuously be thinking about my family and how would they get me out of this jail,” he said, adding that he got to learn a lot of things inside the jail.
Baba said being amongst strangers in jail, who spoke a different language would ‘haunt’ him in his initial days in prison.
Baba is the eldest of four siblings. His two sisters were married while he was in jail. His father Ghulam Nabi Baba died in 2017 due to cancer. It was his younger brother Nazir Ahmad Baba who took charge of running the household and fought for his brother’s release.
“My brother didn’t marry. He would tell me he will marry once I was released,” senior Baba said.
During the 11 years of Baba’s incarceration, his parents came to meet him in jail only twice.
“It was written in my fate. I thank Allah for my release. The court also noticed I was wrongly jailed and they released me,” he said.
The acquittal came just two years after a Rajasthan high court acquitted three Kashmiris—Latif Ahmed Waza (42), Ali Bhatt (48) and Mirza Nisar (39) of all charges relating to the 1996 Samleti blast case.
The trio were released as the prosecution failed to prove their involvement after holding them for over 23 years. They all walked free and innocent of all charges but it took the courts 23 years to pronounce the verdict.
In February 2017, three innocent Kashmiris namely Muhammad Hussain Fazili, Mohammad Rafiq Shah and Tariq Ahmad Dar were acquitted by a Delhi court of all charges related to a series of explosions that killed 67 people and left 200 wounded in the Indian capital in 2005.
Observers said that Kashmiris have been the soft targets of the “draconian laws” like UAPA and Public Safety Act (PSA) for decades.
As per reports, scores of Kashmiris are still behind bars in jails across India and are waiting for their freedom.
The UAPA was introduced in 1967 as legislation to set out reasonable restrictions on the fundamental freedoms under Article 19 (1) of the Constitution, such as freedom of speech, right to peaceful assembly and right to form associations. However, over the years, there have been several amendments to the UAPA to make it stricter when it comes to the rights of the accused, and include more terror-related offences.
On August 3, 2019, a few days before the special status of the Jammu and Kashmir was unilaterally revoked by the BJP led government, the Parliament passed the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Bill, in which an individual can now be designated a terrorist. Fearing misuse of the Act, the Opposition objected to the amendment that allowed naming individuals as terrorists.
At the time, Home Minister Amit Shah assured the House that the Act would not be misused. He said the amendments were necessary as the NIA and other investigative agencies needed to be “four steps” ahead of terrorists.
However, the apprehensions of the opposition including the Congress party—turned out to be true as the BJP led government faced severe criticism for booking dissenters and journalists under UAPA.
In the recent past, several intellectuals and other dissenters across Indian have been booked under UAPA, which includes Umar Khalid, Meenan Haider, Safoora Zargar, Devangana Kalita, Natasha Narwal, Khalid Saifi and many others.
However, in terms of numbers, Kashmir valley has some of the highest figures of the arrests made under UAPA.
On March 09, 2021, the Government of India said that a total of 876 cases have been registered and 505 persons were arrested under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) in Jammu and Kashmir between 2015 to 2019.
Ministry of State for Home Affairs (MHA) GK Reddy stated this in a written reply in Lok Sabha.
Under UAPA, the accused can be detained for six months and can’t apply for bail since investigative agencies get 180 days to probe a case.
Human rights activists in Kashmir maintain that if a Kashmiri is detained under UAPA, he has to spend years in jail until the court prove him innocent.
Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer from the Shopian district of Kashmir argues that UAPA has made the Courts “redundant” and obliterated the principle of separation of powers.
“The investigating agencies feel they can get away with anything under the cover of this dreaded legislation UAPA. It becomes even easier when the accused is a Kashmiri,” he told TwoCircles.net.
Advocate Iqbal further said, “This law has been designed to keep people incarcerated who the Government and Police don’t want to be out.”
“In that sense, this law is not being misused. This was supposed to be the object of this law,” Advocate Iqbal added.
In recent times, the law has also received international criticism.
In February 2021, the United Nations expressed “deep concerns” over the arbitrary use of the anti-terror laws and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) against human rights defenders and journalists in Kashmir “aimed at discrediting their work”.
In a letter addressed to the Government of India on 22 December 2020, the rapporteurs have noted that the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) “authorizes warrantless searches and individual arrests for up to 6 months when the person is designated as ‘terrorist’. Moreover, its broad scope makes it easily amenable to abuse.”
For Baba, he has accepted that his arrest was written in his fate but he has one wish. “I don’t want any other innocent Kashmiri to meet the same fate as mine,” he said.