PSA a lawless law, used in abusive manner in JK: AI

Srinagar: Asking the state government to repeal the Public Safety Act, international human rights body, Amnesty International Monday flayed the authorities for using administrative detention as “a tool to hold hundreds of people each year without charge or trial in order to keep them out of circulation.”Terming the Public Safety Act as a ‘lawless law’, AI in its report— A Lawless Law— released here today by a two member team says that the “state officials often implement the Public Safety Act   in an arbitrative and abusive manner…  Detaining authorities fail to provide material on which the grounds of detention are based to detainees or their lawyers. Detainees can approach (often successfully) to the High Court to quash their order of detention, but Amnesty International’s research clearly shows that the J&K authorities consistently thwart the High Court’s orders for release by re-detaining individuals under criminal charges and or issuing further detention orders, thereby securing their continued incarceration.’’“The ultimate decision as to whether PSA detainees are allowed to go free lies with an executive Screening Committee made up of government officials, police and intelligence officials whose deliberations are not open to any public scrutiny,” it adds.The report further says that the PSA has  been used to detain up to 20,000 people during the last two decades. “Between January and September 2010 alone, 322 people were reportedly detained under the PSA,” it says.“Many of these individuals have been detained after being labeled as “anti-national” solely because they support the cause for Kashmiri independence or a merger with Pakistan and because they are challenging the state through political action or peaceful dissent.”“Amnesty International opposes on principle all systems of administrative detention. The Indian Supreme Court has also described the system of administrative detention as “lawless law. The PSA has become precisely such a “lawless law, largely supplanting  the regular criminal system in J&K,” the report says.It observes that the rate of conviction for possession of unlawful weapons—one of the most common charges brought against alleged supporters or members of armed groups – is 0.5 per 100 cases: over 130 times lower than the national average in India. “Similarly the conviction rate for attempt to murder in J&K is eight times lower than the national average, seven times lower for rioting and five times lower for arson (see graph below). In contrast, the number of persons in administrative detention without trial in J&K is 14 times higher than the national average – a possible result of the monthly / quarterly “targets” or quotas of detentions apparently followed by the J&K police.”AI further says that many of the people detained under the PSA without charge or trial for periods of two years or more may have committed no recognizably criminal offence at all. “Under the PSA, detention can be justified for undefined acts “prejudicial to the security of the State” and for extremely broadly defined acts “prejudicial to the maintenance of public order. The possibility of detention on such vague and broadly defined allegations violates the principle of legality required by Article 9(1) of the International Covenant on civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which India is a party.”