UAPA: Supreme Court cancels bail of 8 PFI men caught with photos of RSS leaders

The Supreme Court on Wednesday cancelled the bail granted by the Madras High Court to eight men booked under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for being members of banned Popular Front of India (PFI) and having conspired to commit terrorist acts across the country. [Union of India vs Barakatullah].The case against the accused were that several documents including some “pictures with markings” of RSS leaders and other Hindu organisations had been found in possession of the accused, suggesting that these leaders were on a “hit list.”.A Bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Pankaj Mithal said that given the gravity of the offence and the fact that only 1.5 years had been spent by then in jail, the Court could interfere and cancel their bail.."Having regard to the seriousness and gravity of the alleged offences, previous criminal history of the respondents as mentioned in the charge-sheet, the period of custody undergone by the respondents being hardly one and half years, the severity of punishment prescribed for the alleged offences and prima facie material collected during the course of investigation, the impugned order passed by the High Court cannot be sustained. We are conscious of the legal position that we should be slow in interfering with the order when the bail has been granted by the High Court, however it is equally well settled that if such order of granting bail is found to be illegal and perverse, it must be set aside," the Court said..Therefore, it cancelled the bail and ordered an expedited trial."In the instant case, we are satisfied from the chargesheet as also the other material/documents relied upon by the appellant that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusations against the respondents are prima facie true and that the mandate contained in the proviso to Section 43(D)(5) would be applicable for not releasing the respondents on bail," the Court added..The Court was hearing an appeal by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) against a Madras High Court order that granted bail to the 8 accused. The High Court had noted that while the NIA charged the appellants of being involved in collecting funds for “committing terrorist acts,” there was nothing on record to link them directly to any terrorist activities..The NIA had told the Court that several documents, including some “pictures with markings” of RSS leaders and other Hindu organisations, had been found in possession of the appellants.The NIA had also contended that based on a "vision document", PFI had an objective to gain political power and to work towards establishment of an Islamic government in India by the year 2047.The accused were arrested in September last year by the NIA, which claimed that the Union government had received information that several members of the PFI were conspiring to organise terrorist acts in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and several other States in India.A special court had denied the appellants bail in January this year, prompting them to approach the High Court in appeal.The High Court granted them bail leading to the appeal before the apex court. .The Supreme Court in appeal held that the High Court committed gross error in wrongly recording perverse findings against the NIA case. "Such perverse findings of the High Court deserve to be strongly deprecated more particularly when the appellant has not alleged the offence under Section 15 of UAPA either in the FIR or in the chargesheet against the respondents. The alleged offences are under Section 18, 18A, 18B etc. For the purpose of considering the offence under Section 18, the commission of terrorist act as contemplated in Section 15 of UAPA is not required to be made out." The High Court 'miserably failed' to comprehend the correct import of Sections 18 and 15 of the UAPA and committed a patent and manifest error, it was stressed.The apex court underscored that national security is always of paramount importance and all kinds of terrorist acts are 'liable to be restricted'. "The UAPA is one of such Acts which has been enacted to provide for effective prevention of certain unlawful activities of individuals and associations, and to deal with terrorist activities, as also to impose reasonable restrictions on the civil liberties of the persons in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India.".The NIA's appeal was, thus, allowed. The accused were directed to surrender before the central agency immediately..Advocate Rajat Nair argued the case for NIA. He was assisted by advocates Srishti Mishra, Satvika Thakur, Raman Yadav, Sakshi Kakkar, Sarthak Karol, Annam Venkatesh and Arvind Kumar Sharma.Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Additional Solicitor General SV Raju also entered appearance for the central agency.Senior Advocates Mukta Gupta, Rebecca John, Shyam Divan, and S Balakrishnan and advocates Rizwan Ahmad, A Nowfal, Nitya Gupta, Javed R Shaikh, Abdul Shukoor, Shereef Ka, Anushka Baruah, Devansh A Mohta, A Selvin Raja, A Raja Mohamed, VS Banu and Khalid Akthar appeared for the accused..[Read Judgment]