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Posted on 29 October 2011 |
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| CURRENT AFFAIRS |
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JAMMU & KASHMIR |
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J&K government moves to amend the PSA
Although the state has amended the dreaded PSA to make it less tortuous, it leaves much to be desired
Riyaz Wani
Srinagar
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J&K CM Omar Abdullah |
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At a time when the spotlight is on the revocation of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) from the state, the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) government on Friday silently moved to amend the dreaded Public Safety Act (PSA). The act under which thousands have been held in the state over the past two decades was termed as “lawless law” by Amnesty International in its 2011 report.
The amendments are as follows:
* In cases where the accused are arrested for disturbing public, the detention period under the PSA has been reduced from existing one year to three months.
* In cases where the accused are charged for being threat to security of the state, the detention period has been reduced from the existing two years to six months.
* PSA will not be invoked for an accused who is less than 18 years of age. The clause, however, applies to state subjects only.
The cabinet, which met here okayed the promulgation of the ordinance titled The Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act (Amendment) Ordinance 2011 which will bring these changes into effect. PSA has been in force in the state since 1978 and all through this period there has been no effort to review its applicability.
The amendments have come seven months after a report by Amnesty International drew much-needed attention to the misuse of the law and made a strong case for the government to change it.
So far, the political class in the state including the separatist Hurriyat has generally exhibited an exclusive preference for the revocation of AFSPA. In fact, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has aggressively pushed for the abrogation of AFSPA in the three years of his tenure. So has People’s Democratic Party (PDP), which over the years, has devoted a substantial amount of its political energy in mobilising opinion against the law. Among separatists, both Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Ali Shah Geelani have made AFSPA removal one of their major pre-conditions for joining the dialogue with New Delhi.
The PSA, Amnesty said, is used “to secure the long-term detention of individuals against whom there is insufficient evidence for a trial”. Amnesty’s figures of detention under PSA over the past two decades range between 8000 and 20,000 with around 322 being booked under the law between January and September 2010. This had persuaded the then Union Home Secretary G K Pillai to assure a drop of 10-20 per cent in the PSA detentions this year which would be followed by further reduction in the years to come.
However, this has hardly been the case. According to the figures provided by J&K Police, around 258 people have been booked under the law between March 2010 and May 2011. And in many cases, the police have also been accused of booking many minors under the act. One such prominent case was the arrest of 17-year-old Faizan. According to J&K Juvenile Justice Act, minors are boys under the age of 16 and girls under the age of 18. But under the national law—and also under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—a boy is minor up to the age of 18.
Riyaz Wani is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.
riyaz.sakhra@gmail.com
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