The government is relying on “copy-paste” arguments to oppose bail to persons charged with offences under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, often without providing any evidence of their guilt, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court said on May 19, reported Bar and Bench.

A division bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Mohammad Yousuf Wani made the remarks in the bail order of Khursheed Ahmad Lone, who has been accused under the anti-terrorism law of “influencing youngsters to take to the path of terrorism and wage a war against the Union of India”.

The respondent in the case is the government of the Union territory through the Anantnag Police Station, which operates under the home department.

Lone was first arrested in April 2013 and booked under the Public Safety Act, reported The Indian Express. He was initially placed under preventive detention but released in October 2013.

Lone was arrested again in October 2022.

“Beware of the words ‘internal security,’ for they are the eternal cry of the oppressor,” the bench said in Lone’s May 19 bail order, quoting the French writer Voltaire.

Sreedharan said that the government in anti-terrorism cases is often found relying on arguments such as “national security, radical Islamism and allegiance to Pakistan [of the accused], radical Islam – Islamist and Islamism [as the influence on the accused], secession of Jammu and Kashmir from India and its accession to Pakistan [as the goal of the accused]”.

“Experience has shown that the main thrust of the prosecution's arguments is usually on these aspects, rather than the specific material…against an accused person,” the court said in its order.

The High Court acknowledged that these arguments were relevant in a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, but clarified that they need to be seen as “supplemental submissions in addition to the material raising a prima facie view that the accused may have committed the offence”.

Sreedharan added that rejecting a person’s bail plea based on the government’s “often forceful submission of internal security”, particularly in cases where it had “utterly failed to disclose any material” against the person accused, would be a “miscarriage of justice”.