Recently, the Social Life of Law project at SOAS University of London and Article 14 collaborated over three years on a four-part investigative series examining the use of India’s principal anti-terror law, the 59-year-old Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), in Karnataka between 2005 and 2025.
Our study exposed long-standing fault lines in the UAPA’s use, tracing cases from the filing of a first information report (FIR) to final outcomes at trial.
Part 1, published on 2 February 2026, outlined the data, methods, and headline findings. Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 examined how UAPA cases are constructed across political regimes and how trial outcomes expose structural flaws in the law’s design and application.
Among the key findings:
– Nearly eight in 10 accused persons were booked during the 10.5 years the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was in office
– Of the 925 individuals accused charged in this period, 783—84.6%—were Muslim
– Charges were dropped before trial in over 37% of cases
– Acquittals outnumbered convictions by more than five to one (244 acquitted versus 46 convicted)
– 80% of convictions were secured through guilty pleas
Why study the UAPA at all?
Three years ago, after publishing A Decade of Darkness, , India’s first digital repository of sedition cases from 2010 to 2020, we set out to build a similar dataset on UAPA prosecutions.
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here.