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POTA - The Missing Link
Better late than never. The approval of an ordinance by the Union Cabinet, to amend the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) to extend more power to the Central and state review committees to make their decisions binding on the governments, even though a belated move, is a step in the right direction.
According to the previous arrangement, the decisions of the committees were only recommendatory in nature and not binding on the governments.
It is difficult to understand how the law-makers failed to provide such a check to this draconian law while enacting it in Parliament. Right from the British period, the tendency of the Indian Police has been to foist cases on innocent people. That too, in the past few decades, the police have been acting according to the dictates of the ruling party and dancing to their tunes to retain their postings.
In such a scenario, it was anybody’s guess that the ruling elite would misuse POTA against their political rivals and the law-makers should have foreseen and provided necessary checks in the law to avoid any sort of misuse. Having failed to rectify such lacunae in the law, now the BJP-led NDA government stands helpless when its brainchild, the POTA, boomerangs on its own partners.
It is only after more than a year that better sense has prevailed and they have realised the urgent need to confer ample powers on the Review Committee to avoid any sort of misuse.
For all criminal laws, the court is the watchdog and if the chargesheets are delayed by the police beyond 60 days, the Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that the accused be released on bail. Our law-makers had made this provision to avoid unnecessary detention in jail if the police failed to prove a case by filing the chargesheet within the given time. When POTA restricts the court from granting bail, some monitoring provisions should have been provided in the law to check its misuse.
Even in the case of the Goondas Act, which was meant for notorious criminals and bail to the accused was restricted, ample powers have been given to the review committees. The committees, which have to review the cases within three months, have many times released people, even ex-convicts, who had been wrongly booked under the Act.
So, the NDA government can be accused of having failed to apply its mind while enacting the law by not foreseeing future repercussions.
POTA has been rightly described by many as draconian in nature due to the fact that even many dreaded criminals involved in murders are able to get out on bail in a matter of 2-3 months, whereas a Member of Parliament (MDMK leader Vaiko), who merely delivered a speech in support of a terrorist organisation from a political platform, is still in jail even after a year.
Even after POTA has been amended, the main lacuna in the law is that there is no time limit provided under the ordinance for the disposal of complaints by the review committee. This will again be one of the drawbacks of the law and if the committee takes a long time to dispose of the complaints, the victim would have to continue to be in jail.
Hence, a time limit has to be fixed for the committees to dispose of the complaints. The quality of the decision made by the state committees will also a question mark as the appointments would be made by the ruling party and the decisions in politically-sensitive cases may go in favour of the government.
The role of the Central committee would be crucial in this regard and in case of a controversy, it should take expeditious decisions in order to avoid the situation where people are unnecessarily detained and save them from mental agony for a prolonged period.
POTA should be a lesson to the law-makers. They should understand that in any criminal law, there should be proper safeguards against any sort of misuse. When the court’s intervention for bail has been restricted, there should be some forum to check the sort of misuse that we have been witnessing, to safeguard the victims.
Of course, the core of criminal law is that any number of wrong-doers can be let free but it is important that an innocent should not be punished.
Harvey
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