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Gujarat Government Considers Bill to Allow Continued Detention of POTA Detainees
June 2, 2004 | Comments Off on Gujarat Government Considers Bill to Allow Continued Detention of POTA Detainees
The Gujarat government is currently considering a bill to allow the continued detention of the accused in the Godhra train massacre, which preceded the 2002 pogroms against Muslims. The accused are currently held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, a draconian law that contains vague definitions of membership and support for “terrorist organizations,” lacks pre-trial safeguards, and lacks insufficient guarantees of rights at trial, among other issues. The Congress central government has stated its intention to repeal POTA:
Sources in the State legal department said the [Gujarat] Government could apply the Gujarat Prevention of Organised Crime Act against them [Godhra detainees].
The draft of the proposed Bill is ready and is now before a select committee of the Assembly. The sources said it might take about two months for the Congress-led coalition Government at the Centre to come up with a Bill to repeal POTA. Unlike as in the case of the repealing of the TADA Act — when the then existing cases under the Act were allowed to be continued — if the POTA is repealed with retrospective effect, the State Government could issue an ordinance to invoke the Prevention of Organised Crime Act to convert the POTA cases under the new Act.
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