The Supreme Court has adjourned till Thursday the two separate special leave petitions (SLPs) filed by NewsClick founder and editor-in-chief Prabir Purkayastha and HR head Amit Chakraborty challenging their arrests and police remand for alleged offences under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
Though senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Devadatt Kamat urged the court to issue formal notices to Delhi police on the issue, the bench of Justices B.R. Gavai and Prashant Kumar Mishra said they would take up the matter on Thursday.
“We want to go through the files. We will take up both the matters, tomorrow,” Justice Gavai, heading the bench, said.
The duo has filed the SLPs challenging the concurrent orders passed by a single-judge bench of Delhi High Court on October 13 and an earlier order of a trial court refusing to quash their arrests and remand.
On October 13, Justice Tushar Rao Gedela of the Delhi High Court refused to interfere with the arrest of Purkayastha and Chakraborty on the ground that “the offences which are alleged, fall within the ambit of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 and directly impact the stability, integrity and sovereignty of the country and are of utmost importance since they would affect the national security”.
Purkayastha and Chakraborty were arrested on October 3 after Delhi police’s special cell raided NewsClick’s office and several journalists associated with it for alleged anti-national activities.
The Delhi police had accused NewsClick of receiving funds illegally from organisations like the People’s Alliance for Democracy and Secularism to sabotage the 2019 elections and also getting illegal funds to project Arunachal Pradesh and Kashmir as not being part of India.
The high court had rejected the plea of Purkayastha and Chakraborty that their arrests and subsequent remand were illegal as the Delhi police’s special cell had not furnished them with the necessary grounds of arrest as was recently ruled by the Supreme Court on October 3 in the matter related to offences under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act).
“…Thus, after examining the entire issue in the right perspective, it appears as of now that the grounds of arrest were indeed conveyed to the petitioner, as soon as may be, after the arrest and as such, there does not appear to be any procedural infirmity or violation of the provisions of the Section 43B of the UAPA or the Article 22(1) of the Constitution of India and as such, the arrest are in accordance with law,” Justice Gedela had observed in his 51-page judgment.
