Critics Say UAPA Fuels Expanding Crackdown on Civil Liberties in Kashmir
Indian authorities closed the Jamia Siraj-ul-Uloom seminary, a major educational seminary for Muslims in Kashmir, on April 24, 2026. The Indian occupying administration sealed the premises after declaring the institute an “unlawful entity” under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). In Islam, education is considered a sacred duty and an act of worship. The pursuit of knowledge is viewed as the foundation for a meaningful life, essential for both spiritual growth and the betterment of society. Closing the seminary is part of the Indian government’s consistent pattern of state-sponsored terrorism and overreach in illegally occupied Kashmir.
India’s UAPA is the country’s primary counter-terrorism legislation. Initially enacted in 1967, it is designed to prevent unlawful activities and associations that threaten the sovereignty and integrity of India. UAPA has become a central tool of control in Kashmir, expanding state power to exercise long-term detentions for those actively opposing occupation, such as the closing of institutions of learning, and even book stores. Human Rights Watch (HRW), along with various news publications, has written on the continued oppression and occupation in Kashmir in the last seven years after India revoked the region’s special autonomous status on August 5, 2019.
In Kashmir, UAPA operates alongside PSA (Public Safety Act) and AFSPA, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, a controversial Indian parliamentary law forming a layered security-legal architecture that critics describe as structurally tilted against civilians and civil rights activists.
UAPA carries arbitrary detentions for perceived breaches of “security laws”. The Public Safety Act (PSA), a stringent legislation often used in Kashmir, allows for the detention for up to two years without a trial for people above 18 years of age. According to InsightTurkey, the PSA is structured to allow the State to impose surveillance in Kashmir to subdue occupation resistance.
Stand with Kashmir publication writes in Kashmir, the UAPA is being used to stifle all forms of resistance and expression of the people against the ongoing illegal occupation and settler colonization. India is expanding the definition of “terrorism” to include all forms of not just legitimate armed resistance to colonial rule, but also non-violent expression. This further threatens Kashmiri civil society and rights defenders. HRW wrote that the authorities have used the counterterrorism law in an arbitrary manner to crack down on peaceful critics, journalists, and human rights defenders to silence resistance.
The use of UAPA is state-sanctioned terrorism. The law creates an atmosphere of subjugation. Once detained under the pretense of breaking a “security law,” the stigma associated with that detention looms over a person for years, even without a conviction. The Diplomat and the Kashmir Institute of International Relations support this statement.
The Kashmir Institute of International Relations, KIIR, wrote in their Human Rights Report 2025, “India’s approach to governance in the Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IoJK) exemplifies colonial tactics characterized by militarization, suppression of dissent, and systemic human rights violations. Since the region’s controversial accession to India in 1947, the Indian state has employed a strategy of heavy militarization to assert control over the disputed territory. This approach has been marked by numerous incidents of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions, and targeted violence against civilians, collectively underscoring the severity and frequency of state-sponsored violence. Such actions reveal a pattern of coercive governance aimed at consolidating Indian sovereignty over the region .”
United Nations General Assembly human rights reports, HRC 57 NGO 8 and HRC 59 NGO 20 present UAPA in Kashmir as part of a broader system of “draconian laws” — along with AFSPA and PSA — that obstruct the Kashmiri population’s ability to exercise civil and political rights, including the right to self-determination.
The analytical paper Preventive Detention in Counter-Insurgencies: The Case of Kashmir, published by InsightTurkey, notes that the latter reports argue that the cumulative impact is structural. Showing that these are not just individual cases of abuse, but rather a legal environment that normalizes exceptional measures as the everyday governance framework in Kashmir.
UAPA cases in IoJK have increased significantly
In recent years, the number of UAPA cases in Jammu and Kashmir has increased dramatically. In 2022, the region recorded the highest number of such cases in the country, with 371 cases out of the total 1,005, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau of India.
From 1,948 in 2019 to 2,914 in 2023, the number of arrests made under the stringent UAPA has seen a steady rise across the country, even though the overall conviction rate in these cases remains as low as just 3 per cent, according to the 2025 data shared by the Centre. At the Union Territory level, Jammu and Kashmir tops the list with 1,206 arrests under UAPA charges in 2023, with just 10 resulting in convictions. ETV Bharat a digital news platform in India that delivers regional, national, and global news.
Kashmir Life publication wrote in 2024, a total of 2,615 cases were registered under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act from 2020 to 2022, according to the Minister of State for Home Affairs. Jammu and Kashmir reported the highest number of UAPA cases during this period, with 287 cases in 2020, 289 in 2021, and 371 in 2022. These figures sum up to 947 cases over the three years, constituting over 36 percent of the total UAPA cases registered across India.
Analysis from the Center for Law and Policy Research, CLPR, on the use of UAPA, based on the National Crime Records Bureau, shows that case counts climbed from double digits in 2014–2015 to over 150 per year from 2016 onwards, then to nearly 300 per year by 2020–2021 and 371 in 2022. Multiple sources, including Kashmir Life, have noted that from 2020–2022, IoJK alone accounts for roughly 36–37% of all UAPA cases in India, despite being a small fraction of the national population.
Rights groups like Amnesty International and legal analyses from CLPR interpret these numbers as evidence that UAPA has shifted from a narrowly targeted counter-terror tool to a routine instrument of overreach in Kashmir, which is used far more frequently there than elsewhere else in India.
The Islamic Post Staff