In a ruling that slices legal hair with surgical precision, the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court has upheld the acquittal of a man accused under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) for pasting posters warning Panchayat members to quit or face deadly consequences.
The Division Bench, led by Justices Sanjeev Kumar and Sanjay Parihar, concluded that while the posters were indeed threatening, they didn’t tick the legal boxes for “unlawful activity” under Section 13 of the UAPA. In other words — intimidation? Yes. Threat to India’s sovereignty? No.
The case dates back to 2012, when police alleged that the posters were linked to the banned Hizbul Mujahideen. Yet, the trial court in Anantnag, in 2024, found the evidence far too flimsy. Witnesses had turned hostile, and the only damning piece was a handwriting match suggested by a forensic expert — not enough, the courts decided, to sustain a UAPA charge.
The High Court agreed, noting that the words on the posters neither called for secession nor disrupted India’s sovereignty. Still, the judges remarked the act might have fit under the Ranbir Penal Code, which applied in J&K at the time — but sending the case back after more than eight years of trial would be, in their words, inappropriate.
And so, the UAPA charge has been buried — leaving only the faint shadow of a criminal case that never quite found its legal footing.
