Though India and Britain suffered terrorist attacks in quick succession, there is an enormously significant difference in the response of the two governments. The Tony Blair Government has seized the opportunity to hammer out an all-party consensus on a tighter anti-terrorist law, which is proposed to be enacted by this year-end. But the Manmohan Singh Government, having revoked Pota only 10 months ago, has displayed no inclination to follow the example of its UK counterpart. It did not bite the bait even when the leader of the opposition, L.K. Advani, called for the return of the law to strengthen the hands of the security forces.The difference in the approach of the two countries is also evident from the slew of ambitious proposals announced by the Blair government. They are fraught with the risk of upsetting the delicate balance between security and human rights. Take, for instance, the proposal to empower the police to take pre-emptive action against ‘‘acts preparatory to terrorism.’’ Much as it is a desirable object, an anticipatory power is always open to question and the police would be hard pressed to justify their allegation that the accused was preparing to commit or aid terrorism. The proposal to crack down on ‘‘indirect’’ incitement to commit terrorist acts offers even greater scope for abuse. Without the help of any judicially determinable parameters, the police would have the unenviable task of drawing a line between what constituted legitimate dissent and what could be construed as a covert attempt to instigate terrorism. A sure recipe for endless court battles.The fact that the British government has been forced to contemplate such dodgy provisions is itself a perverse victory for terrorists. London has been applauded for the resilience it displayed in returning to normal life. But, given the draconian provisions that are sought to be enacted in the wake of London blasts, terrorists seem to have succeeded in inflicting a damage that may be less visible but is more debilitating. The British legal system, widely admired for its liberal character, may not remain the same.It was probably to minimise such a danger that the anti-terrorist law enacted by Britain in the wake of 9/11, the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (ATCSA), was focused on foreign nationals. ATCSA was based on the questionable premise that the threat of Islamist terrorism came only from foreign nationals. Accordingly, ATCSA empowered the government to detain suspected international terrorists regardless of whether they committed any crime in Britain or not. Such discrimination between citizens and foreigners was peculiar to the British law, though the power to detain without trial was otherwise a common feature of the anti-terrorist laws of most countries, including India. Last December, the highest court of Britain handed down a judgment which, not surprisingly, declared that the discrimination between foreigners and citizens in the anti-terrorist law was incompatible with the country’s international commitment to human rights.Thus, barely four months before the London transport system was attacked by a group of British nationals, the Blair government had introduced a regime of ‘‘control orders’’ which dispensed with the distinction between foreigners and citizens in deference to the House of Lords judgment. The involvement of British nationals in 7/7 has provided an impetus for enacting more provisions to grapple with the threat from within. But, despite the grave provocation of 7/7, the Blair government has remained opposed to the demand to make telephone intercepts admissible in evidence.This is one of the most tell-tale differences between the British and Indian anti-terrorist laws. Pota, enacted in the wake of 9/11, happened to confer evidentiary value on telephone intercepts in India. The police used this provision to prosecute the Parliament attack case. While repealing Pota in September 2004, the Manmohan Singh government took care to graft the intercept provision, among other anti-terrorist clauses, into the ordinary criminal law. Thus, even though there is no more any special anti-terrorist law in India, the police retain the option of producing telephone intercepts as evidence in terrorist cases. The police in Britain, however, have no such option despite the existence of a special anti-terrorist law. This anomaly is thanks to the Blair government’s position that disclosure of telephone intercepts would compromise the work of intelligence agencies. Human rights groups in Britain do not buy this argument and have in fact been demanding that telephone intercepts be brought out of the closet.For all their solidarity in the battle against terrorism, India and Britain couldn’t have been more different in their legal approach. It’s not easy to say which is better, especially when the UK provisions are yet to be framed.
