Did Supreme Court Misinterpret UAPA "Conviction Rate" Statistics To Mean Possibility Of Acquittal?

In a judgment delivered yesterday [Syed Iftikhar Andrabi v. National Investigation, Jammu], the Supreme Court quoted a few statistics regarding the number of persons arrested and convicted in India under the UAP Act during the period 2019- 2023.

Referring to them, the bench of Justice BV Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan said that the country-wide percentage of conviction under the UAP Act for the five years comprising the period 2019-23 hovers between 2% to 6%.

“In other words, there is 94% to 98% possibility of acquittal in such cases in the country. When it comes to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the percentage of conviction is abysmal, to say the least. For the aforesaid period, the annual rate of conviction is always less than 1%. It means that at the end of the trial, there is 99% possibility of acquittal in such cases.”, the Court said.

The Court then concluded that the conviction rate in UAPA cases is poor, with chances of acquittal more than 90 to 95% whether it is on the basis of all India figures or Jammu and Kashmir.

To me, this seems to be a gross misinterpretation of data. For instance, it is shown that 1206 persons were arrested in 2023 (Class 1). In the same year (2023) only 10 were convicted. (Class 2). The percentage of conviction is seen calculated using the formula: Number of convictions (10) ÷ Number of arrests (1206) × 100 = 0.83%.

It is quite impossible that these 10 convicted are from those 1206 accused arrested in earlier cases. These persons belong to two different classes. Therefore, the “percentage of conviction: 0.83” connecting these two different classes is erroneous.

This is not how conviction rates should be computed. A genuine conviction rate is: Convictions ÷ (Convictions + Acquittals) for cases disposed of in a given period. We can also track what percentage of arrests from a specific year ultimately result in conviction after all appeals.

I recently came across a news article reporting the remarks made by Justice Ujjal Bhuyan criticizing the widespread use of the UAPA. According to the judge, large numbers of arrests under the anti-terror law coupled with very low conviction rates “cannot be a model of Viksit Bharat". “It shows consistently low conviction. What does it indicate — overuse if not misuse (of the law) and its impact on the criminal justice system. How much burden does it put on courts? This shows the vast majority were arrested but could not be convicted. This indicates many arrests were premature and unsupported by sufficient evidence," he had said. These remarks are now made part of a Judgment of the Supreme Court of India.

The Supreme Court has quoted "conviction rate" statistics given by National Crime Records Bureau and has misinterpreted it as "acquittal possibility". Now it is the duty of the Central Government and National Crime Records Bureau to clear this confusion around "Conviction Rates" and inform the Supreme Court and the other stakeholders that this cannot be used to compute acquittal possibility.

Author is an Advocate practising in the High Court of Kerala and also a Consulting Editor at Verdictum.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.