Congress leader P Chidambaram asks who’s responsible for NewsClick founder’s illegal arrest

Veteran Congress leader P Chidambaram has questioned who is responsible for illegal arrest of NewsClick founder Prabir Purkayastha, while welcoming the Supreme Court's judgment declaring his arrest under the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) as invalid.

Prabir was arrested by Special Cell of Delhi Police under the under UAPA, along with company's HR head Amit Chakravarty on October 3 last year on charges of taking money from China to "disrupt the sovereignty of India" and cause disaffection against the country.

The apex court declared the arrest invalid on Wednesday citing procedural lapses.

Taking to X, Chidambaram wrote, “"NewsClick founder was arrested on October 3, 2023. The Supreme Court ruled today that his arrest was illegal. Justice will ultimately triumph and it has today.”

"Who will be held responsible for the illegal arrest? Who will pay the penalty for depriving the journalist of his freedom for over 7 months?" the Congress leader asked in the post on Wednesday.

In the order passed by a bench of Justice BR Gavi and Justice Sandeep Mehta on Wednesday noted that the remand application and the grounds of arrest were not supplied to Prabir or his counsel before his custody application was decided by the trial court.

Meanwhile, the bench also mandated that the grounds of arrest must be supplied to the accused in writing in the cases registered under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967.

In the NewsClick case, Prabir’s special leave petition assailing a decision of the Delhi High Court upholding his arrest by the Delhi Police argued that till date, the grounds of arrest have not been supplied. 

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Prabir, had relied upon Pankaj Bansal's case (where the top Court had held that merely reading out the grounds of arrest will not fulfil the mandate of Article 22(1) and Section 19(1) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act which talks about the power to arrest) for the argument.

Per contra, Delhi police had argued that Pankaj Bansal was peculiar to the statutory scheme of the PMLA and could not apply to UAPA or other laws that have their own provisions, reported LiveLaw.

However, the court, after examining both the Acts, opined that that there is no substantial difference in the language used under Section 19 of the PMLA and Section 43(B) (Procedure of arrest) of the UAPA.

“We find that the provision regarding the communication of the grounds of arrest to a person arrested contained in Section 43B(1) of the UAPA is verbatim the same as that in Section 19(1) of the PMLA.,” the Court added.

Elaborating, the Court said that the constitutional safeguard provided under Article 22(1) of the Constitution of India will apply to both the provisions i.e, Section 19 of the PMLA and Section 43 of the UAPA. 

As per this Article, no person who is arrested shall be detained in custody without being informed, as soon as may be, of the grounds for such arrest.