Anti-Terror Laws in India

Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967

• This law was enacted to offer for more strong prevention of certain illegal activities of people and associations, and for topics linked with it.
• It empowered appropriate authorities to claim any association as ‘unlawful’ if it’s carrying out ‘illegal activities’. This regulation was comprehensively amended to deal with terrorist activities.
• It was amended in the years 2004, 2008, 2013, and 2019 to feature certain provisions referring to various aspects of terrorism.

UAPA (Amendment), 2019

• Union government may designate an individual or an organisation as a terrorist company if it:
  • commits or participates in acts of terrorism,
  • prepares for terrorism,
  • promotes terrorism, or
  • is otherwise concerned in terrorism.
• The Act defines terrorist acts to include acts committed in the scope of any of the treaties indexed in a schedule to the Act.
• The Schedule lists 9 treaties, consisting of the Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings (1997), and the Convention towards Taking of Hostages (1979).
• Amendment provides any other treaty to this list particularly, the International Convention for Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (2005).

National Security Act, 1980

• The National Security Act, 1980 is India’s preventive detention regulation.
• Preventive detention is essentially the detention of a person without an ordeal to prevent him/her from committing a crime.
• It empowers the Union Government or the State Governments to detain a person to prevent him from performing in any way prejudicial to the defence of India, the relations of India with foreign powers, or the security of India.

Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act or TADA, 1985 and 1987

• The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985, was enacted in the history of escalation of terrorist activities in some elements of the country. The life of the said Act was limited to a period of  years. 
• The constitutional validity of TADA , 1987 was challenged before the Supreme Court in Kartar Singh vs State of Punjab 1994. 

The Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA)

• It was enforced on 24th April 1999. 
• This regulation was especially made to address growing organized crime in Maharashtra and mainly in Mumbai due to the underworld. 
• MCOCA does not stipulate prosecution of police officers determined responsible for its misuse.

Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (POTA)

• Since the lapse of TADA, the country witnessed several terrorist incidents-which include hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 to Kandahar in 1999 and the attack on Parliament in December, 2001. 
• However, it was controversial on numerous elements and was challenged in an ideally suited court in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties vs Union of India, on the ground that it violated simple human rights. The Supreme Court upheld the Constitutional validity of the law even as stipulating some regulations on the arbitrary use of certain powers.
• POTA was envisaged as beneficial in stemming “nation-subsidized cross-border terrorism”. The act replaced the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) of 2001 and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (1985-95).

National Investigating Agency Act, 2008

• National Investigating Agency (NIA) was created after the 2008 Mumbai terror assaults as the need for a critical corporation to fight terrorism was realised.
• The National Investigation Agency aims to be a well expert investigative organisation matching the global needs.
• The NIA aims to set the requirements of excellence in counter terrorism and other national security related investigations at the national level by growing into an exceedingly trained, partnership oriented workforce.

National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID)

• NATGRID is a bold counterterrorism mechanism, as a way to utilise technologies like Big Data and analytics to examine and analyse the big quantities of statistics from various intelligence and enforcement organizations to help track suspected terrorists and prevent terrorist assaults.
• It is a counter terrorism measure that collects and collates a number of statistics from government databases including tax and bank account details, credit/debit card transactions, visa and immigration information and itineraries of rail and air travel. 
• It also has access to the Crime and legal Tracking Network and Systems, a database that links crime statistics, including First Information Reports, across 14,000 police stations in India.

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