November 1, 2001	Thursday	Shaba’an 14, 1422

NEW DELHI, Oct 31: A tough new Indian decree to deal with terrorism, introduced after the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, has come under criticism and looks set to be stifled at birth by opposition parties.

Experts said India already has some two dozen special security laws and, if used effectively, they were adequate to fight terrorism.

Indian President K.R. Narayanan last week approved the Prevention Of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO), which sets strict guidelines for arrest, interrogation and investigation.

The decree also defines a terrorist act as one threatening India’s unity as well as one causing terror among its people.

It also makes it mandatory for anyone, including journalists, with information about potential acts of terrorism to pass such information on to security officials.

Under POTO, a suspect can be detained without trial for 30 days, while in some Western countries with similar laws the limit is three or four days.

“Any such new law needs to be carefully tailored to the needs of the people, enforced for a specific period of time and should be subject to judicial review at all times,” Ravi Nair, executive director of the Delhi-based South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, told Reuters. “That is not the case with POTO.”

India, a country of over one billion people and dozens of diverse ethnic groups, has been plagued for years by bloody separatist rebellions in Kashmir and the northeast.

Radical political groups also often resort to violent attacks against government agencies and the public in other parts of the country to highlight their agendas.

“NEW LAW FOR NEW THREATS”: POTO was pushed into law under an emergency constitutional provision, but needs to be approved during the session of parliament which starts next month to remain in effect.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government needs the support of opposition parties — which have attacked the law — as it does not have a majority in the upper house of parliament.

A senior Home (interior) Ministry official said the existing criminal justice system was not designed to deal with the “heinous terrorist crimes” being witnessed since the 1980s.

“We had no law that defined a terrorist act, no provisions relating to financing terrorists, use of weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological attacks...the possibility of which are so real after Sept 11,” the official, who did not want to be identified, said.—Reuters