New Delhi: Disclosing names of people against whom the Delhi Police has registered cases under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act may "not be in a larger public interest" and may "impact" cases, Parliament was informed on Tuesday.
Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai informed Lok Sabha in a written reply that the Delhi Police has registered nine cases under the law and arrested 34 people during 2020.
He was also asked about the names of the people against whom cases have been registered by police under this law during the period.
"Disclosure of further details of cases may not be in a larger public interest as the same may impact the cases," the minister said.
Significantly, at least 21 of these 34 arrested last year under UAPA, are accused in the Special Cell's FIR pertaining to what the Delhi Police have called the "main conspiracy" behind the north-east Delhi riots last February.
Several activists, students, politicians and scholars have been arrested in this FIR, in which two chargesheets have been filed so far. Those accused include the likes of former JNU student leader and anti-CAA activist Umar Khalid, activists from groups like United Against Hate such as Khalid Saifi, JNU students and scholars Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita, several Jamia students such as Safoora Zargar, Meeran Haider and Asif Iqbal Tanha.
Significantly, there are also many other Muslim men from north-east Delhi, implicating them in the case, with most of them insisting that they did not know any of the other accused in the case. One of them was Faizan Khan, a local who worked at a SIM card store. He was also the first accused in this case to have been granted regular bail.
Data provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs in Parliament earlier this year showed that only 2.2 per cent of UAPA cases registered between 2016-2019 ended in a conviction.
Many recent reports showed UAPA cases being quashed after years and sometimes decades of pretrial incarceration.