An investigative series that began in The Sunday Express has turned up shocking stories of the bumbling, paranoid state. Especially since the December 13 attack on Parliament, the Official Secrets Act, an antiquated piece of legislation crafted by the British in 1923 and one that ought to have been consigned to history decades ago, has been invoked in scandalous and ridiculous ways. There are absurdities here such as the same person arrested in two cases by two agencies or another held at two different places; there is stock ‘evidence’ and stock ‘witnesses’ that would not stand up in any court of law. It may be increasingly difficult to ask questions of the state in these times when ‘national security’ is becoming a looming, catch-all certitude and we are accosted daily by a bloating, exaggerated notion of ‘the enemy’. But it is precisely in times such as these that questions must be asked, and asked again till they are answered. When journalist Iftikar Geelani was freed after a seven-month incarceration from the capital’s Tihar Jail, it was a moment of redemption for all those who had shouted against the flimsy case made out against him and persisted in making their voices heard above the din of official terror-speak and terror alerts. But even in that moment, many pointed out that Geelani may have been lucky — luckier than others who may share his predicament, away from the Capital and outside the glare of the national media’s searchlight. What about the other Geelanis imprisoned by the state, they asked. As this paper’s investigations show, those fears were justified. Many of the faceless OSA detenues the Express spoke to — serving or retired assistants, technicians, sergeants and drivers, a majority of whom are Muslims — turned out to be in jail on charges of possessing ‘secrets’ they are alleged to have passed on to Pakistani agents, ‘secrets’ as readily available on the Internet or in daily newspapers as was the ‘sensitive’ information discovered on Geelani’s computer. Many of these documents boast of identical hand-drawn sketches of Meerut cantonment, when they don’t reveal details of ‘vital installations’ like the Delhi secretariat, the Okhla Barrage, the Indian Oil Corporation. It could be the deepening chill between India and Pakistan or the fact that a new team of over-exuberant sleuths has taken charge of OSA prosecutions since December 13. It could be the pressure on these teams to show ‘results’ that could match the officialese of terror. Whatever it is, there is no justification for a democratic state trampling so unbecomingly on civil liberties. There is no excuse for the Official Secrets Act to exist in this age of information. The government that enacted the Freedom of Information law and acknowledged its mistake in holding Iftikar Geelani, must now initiate a course correction.
