'Stillborn law': SC says UP Gangsters Act prone to misuse

Observing that the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act is prone to misuse, the Supreme Court has held that the 1986 law is "stillborn," since a person cannot be punished merely for being labelled a "gangster."

A bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and K. Vinod Chandran said the law, enacted to curb violence and organised criminal activity, could instead be used against unsuspecting citizens.

The UP Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act is a special state law meant to target and punish organised crime syndicates, criminal gangs and habitual anti-social elements. A "stillborn" law is a legal term for a statute that is invalid or legally dead from its inception because it fails to define a valid offence.

The top court said the Act could "perpetuate" violence against citizens "on the pretext of adjuring violence."

"After defining gang, which includes commission of the offences listed under sub-clauses (i) to (xxv), and defining gangster as a member or leader or organiser of a gang, the punishment is prescribed for a gangster without an offence being created by statute, which makes the penal act stillborn," the bench said.

Quoting English author George Orwell, the court said: "Those who abjure violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf."

The court said the menace of criminal gangs needed to be curbed, but that the end did not justify the means, especially where a penal law interferes with citizens' liberty.

"The provisions of the Act could lead to a detention of the accused without trial for long, which is akin to a statute enjoining preventive detention. Though preventive detention has been held to be permissible even in the teeth of Article 21, the same is hedged with safeguards, which are held to be sacrosanct, and even a minor procedural violation would entail release of the detenu," the bench said. "However compelling and threatening the social menace, any penal enactment to curb that cannot lead to arbitrary and capricious actions against the one alleged with the commission of an offence."

The court passed the judgment while quashing criminal cases against two advocates, Shiv Pratap Singh and Himanshu Srivastava, booked under the Act.