: The government on Monday proposed in the Assembly amendments to the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Dangerous Activities (TPDA) Act, popularly known as the Goondas Act, which if passed will make significant changes to the very definition of an “offender” under the law.
Removing the term ‘Habitually’, the amendments seek to bring under preventive detention law, if deemed necessary by the State, even first-time offenders.
The former Judge of the Madras High Court, Justice K. Chandru, says that the concept of the preventive detention law was envisaged for habitual offenders.
“The amendments will be violative of Article 22 of the Constitution, which prescribes the parameters for such detention laws,” he points out.
Time and again, Justice Chandru says, High Courts had flagged abuse of the Goondas Act and have struck down numerous such detentions. In such a scenario, removing the term “Habitually” may make way for further misuse of the law by the police, he cautions.
More significantly, the Bill also proposes to bring under the Goondas Act the offences listed in Chapter XI of the Information Technology Act. This includes Section 66(A) that prohibits “offensive messages through communication service.”
In recent times, a number of persons have been booked under this Section in many parts of the country for posting “offensive” messages on social media sites attracting outrage from rights activists.
In fact, moving one step further, the amendments in the Bill make even “preparations” for engaging in a cyber crime an offence if it had the potential to affect public order.
“By bringing within its ambit those persons who are preparing to engage in the commission of a cyber-law offence, the police will be authorised to detain individuals who simply visit a website that carries derogatory material that, if disseminated, will endanger public order. Such a provision is hardly reasonable and is constitutionally suspect,” feels Abhishek Sudhir, Assistant Director of the Centre for Public Law and Jurisprudence at the Jindal Global Law School. “Such a provision is violative of Article 21 of the Constitution [which protects right of life and personal liberty].”
As on April 7, Tamil Nadu had 1851 persons detained under the TPDA.
