A Review of Seema Azad’s ‘Unsilenced – The Jail Diary of an Activist’

“In prison, everyone dreams about one thing and one thing only — being free.” – Seema Azad, Unsilenced (translated by Shailza Sharma)

Seema Azad’s prison memoir, translated by Shailza Sharma, is a powerful narration of hopelessness, hope, and resilience. The memoir takes the reader through Azad’s experiences in Naini Central Prison as a Maoist accused. When it was originally published in Hindi (‘Zinda Nama’) in 2017, it was one of the rare contributions to prison literature from the state of Uttar Pradesh, but now forms part of a growing repository of contemporary prison literature emerging from the incarceration of activists, journalists and academics under the central counter-terrorism legislation, that is, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (‘UAPA’). Azad’s arrest exemplifies how easily procedure is dispensed with in cases of alleged terror accused persons. A reading of this memoir alongside existing custodial jurisprudence also reveals a stark gap between the law and the ground realities of women in custody.

UAPA and the Expansive Limits of Carcerality

Azad provides a background of her activism, which she states directly led to her incarceration. Apart from her role as an Editor of the Dastak magazine, which publishes critical writing on various government policies, Azad had also been associated with the Uttar Pradesh chapter of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (‘PUCL’).

The UAPA was originally enacted in 1967, in response to growing threats of insurgencies and justified as a tool for national integration. Through an amendment in December 2004, the Central Government’s counter-terrorism powers were expanded. This occurred alongside the repeal of the previous counter-terrorism legislation, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002, owing to its rampant abuse. Through this amendment, the definition of “terrorist act” and other offences pertaining to terrorism were added to the UAPA, including the power of the Central Government to declare an organisation as a “terrorist organisation”, in addition to its existing power to declare an association as unlawful. The UAPA was amended again in 2008, expanding the definition of a “terrorist act” and introducing Section 43D which modified provisions pertaining to remand and bail. Under the new Section 43D(5), courts could now deny bail upon a prima facie satisfaction that a case is made out based only on the materials supplied by the police. In the same year, a special central investigation agency, the National Investigation Agency, was established to investigate UAPA offences, amongst others. In 2012, the ambit of “terrorist act” was expanded to include “economic security”. The latest amendment took place in 2019, which permitted the Central Government to declare individuals as “terrorists” without a trial. While former terror legislations included a sunset clause, came to lapse or were repealed due to their political abuse, UAPA continues to remain and has been further entrenched, with each amendment, into the criminal legal architecture.

In February 2010, Azad and her partner Vishwa Vijai were arrested after being charged with offences under the UAPA, two years after the addition of Section 43D. The memoir begins with Azad’s observation in this regard, that arrests of activists and journalists under counterterrorism legislation was uncommon — although not unknown — at that time. In contrast to the figures of arrest which are now increasingly being reported, Azad and Vijai were the only inmates in Naini Central Prison who were booked under the UAPA during their incarceration. The rise in the use of UAPA against dissenters and the low rate of conviction is also indicative of a trajectory which is similar to what became the basis for the lapse and repeal of previous counter-terrorism legislations.

The arrest of Azad and Vijai signifies what has come to be known as “guilt by association” — a term often invoked in the context of criminalisation by mere association with an organisation rather than the conventional notion of crime as constitutive of overt acts. Criminologists Andrew Ashworth and Lucia Zedner have described these as pre-inchoate offences, and observe that they have been included in, although not limited to, the framework of Britain’s anti-terrorism legislation as well. Section 10 of UAPA is an example, as it criminalises membership of an unlawful association. The Supreme Court decision in Arup Bhuyan v State of Assam (‘Arup Bhuyan’) had sought to introduce safeguards against “guilt by association” wherein it held that mere membership of a banned organisation will not make a person a criminal unless he resorts to or incites violence, thereby excluding passive membership from the scope of an offence under Section 10.  However,  the guilt by association doctrine was reestablished by the Supreme Court in March 2023 in the Arup Bhuyan review case, which read “passive”, as opposed to only “active” membership to fall within the framework of Section 10 UAPA, overturning more than a decade long jurisprudence that had made only active membership an offence. Moreover, the offence of membership is often hinged on mere “possession” and subsequent seizure by the police, of books, pamphlets or posters. This literature may be purported to propagate the ideology of a “banned organisation” or to consist of political messaging of injustices against a community, amongst others.

Three years prior to Azad’s arrest, the PUCL Chhattisgarh General Secretary, Binayak Sen, had also been arrested under UAPA and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act, 2005. In 2018, eight years after Azad’s arrest, Sudha Bharadwaj, then General Secretary of PUCL Chhattisgarh was arrested under UAPA. The arrest of Sen, Azad, Bharadwaj, and several others, share a similar pattern of the ascription of guilt by association. This phenomenon needs to be understood in its wider context of not just including “unlawful association”, an offence defined under UAPA, but also the growing perception of suspicion around human rights organisations.  Thus, guilt by association indicates not only an inversion of a basic criminal law principle requiring an intention for the commission of an offence, but also potentially throws a wide array of human rights work within the fold of criminality. This can be seen from the nature of alleged incriminating materials seized from Azad, which included literature critical of the government, and the line of questioning taken during her interrogation that sought information on the officer bearers of PUCL.

How Procedural Protections are Violated

 Apart from a digression from general criminal law principles, arrests made under UAPA often digress from the requirement of strict observance of procedure especially under stringent laws. In recent times, this could also be seen in the arrest and remand of Gautam Navlakha and Prabir Purkayastha (amongst others), wherein the latter also led to the development of jurisprudence on providing written grounds of arrest, thus acting as a safeguard against arbitrary arrests. Moreover, it is now mandated that the accused needs to be informed of the grounds of their arrest by the police in writingtwo hours prior to their production before the Magistrate.

The manner of Azad and Vijai’s arrest signifies a common phenomenon observed in terrorism cases, wherein individuals, usually unaware of any ongoing investigation against them, are picked up surreptitiously by law enforcement authorities and taken for interrogation. Often, the official records of these procedures, reflected in court orders and judgements, consist of the prosecution’s version. Thus, unless the courts attempt otherwise, the knowledge of procedural violations risks being subjugated, and getting excluded from being factored in as “prejudice” to an accused person.

Thus, prison memoirs and writings, and sometimes conversations with people who have spent time in prison, offer valuable insights into various aspects of adherence and violations of procedure. For instance, both Azad and Vijai prior to their arrest were picked up from the railway station by the Special Task Force who did not identify themselves initially. Similar experiences have been narrated by others, wherein unknown persons — often police officials in plain clothes —arrive at a spot, push the individual suspect into a vehicle, and drive them off to an unknown location where they are also subjected to torture. Azad and Vijai’s arrest  was not preceded by a First Information Report (‘FIR’), rather it followed their arrest, thus calling into question the very basis of their arrest. Moreover, Azad mentions that she was arrested in the absence of a woman police officer, which however came to be recorded in the FIR. As per procedure, a woman cannot be subjected to interrogation at the police station. It was only much later that their friends and family were made aware of their arrest, and they were produced before the Magistrate only the next afternoon, although it is not very clear if it was just in time to fulfil the twenty-four hour mandate within which the police is expected to produce the accused before the jurisdictional Magistrate.

Procedural guidelines on arrest and detention laid down in DK Basu v State of West Bengal and later codified under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, (‘CrPC’) and the current Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (‘BNSS’), mandate intimation to the next friend or relative, and intimation of grounds of arrest “forthwith” in terror cases (especially, but also otherwise). However, often these guidelines assume a nominal status.

Another procedural safeguard in law is the prohibition of signing and use of statements given to the police as evidence, as seen from a reading of Section 181(1) BNSS with Section 23(1) Bharatiya Sakshiya Adhiniyam 2023 (‘BSA’). The objective of this provision is to protect statements that may have been obtained by torture from being attributed to individuals. However, Section 181 of the BNSS, excludes disclosure statements from its purview. A disclosure statement is an exception to the law prohibiting admissibility of a confession made to a police officer. Section 23(2) BSA (formerly Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872) allows for the admissibility of that part of the disclosure statement which leads to any “discovery of fact” or a recovery made in pursuance of it. This would mean that statements purported to have been recorded under Section 23(2) BSA, may be signed and attributed to an accused. Azad’s memoir throws light on how this provision may be manipulated by the police to illegally show recoveries made from the accused. Azad states that she was repeatedly asked to sign on some sheets without being given a chance to read them. Eventually she gave in to the pressure and signed them. It was only when the statement was read in court during their remand hearing that she realised that the police had changed the statement, and attributed alleged knowledge of “Maoist dens” on her part. Thus, the police wanted to use her signed statement as a disclosure statement to seek her custody. However, the Magistrate rejected the application upon learning that the statement was not read back to Azad.

Prison Jurisprudence

 The memoir also throws light on the gaps in the implementation of existing prison jurisprudence. Following the decision in Maneka Gandhi v Union of India — in which “procedure established by law” under Article 21 was interpreted to mean not just any procedure but that which is just, fair and reasonable — fairness in procedure has been reiterated in various Supreme Court decisions dealing with prisons governance and rights of prisoners, whether undertrial or convicts. In Sunil Batra v Delhi Administration, the Supreme Court while dealing with the constitutional challenge to solitary confinement and confinement in iron fetters as provided under the statute governing prisons (Prisons Act,1894), also dealt with the aspects of an inmate’s personhood, dignity in prison, and the rule of prison law. The court underscored the importance of safeguarding fundamental rights even within prison compounds.

The health and hygiene of prisoners, and the protection of interests of the children of women prisoners, have also been recognised as important constituents of prisoners’ rights. As viewed against these iterations of prison justice, the trajectory of Azad and Vijai’s arrest, and the prison conditions observed by them in their respective memoirs, reveals the contrast between the “ideal justice system and the functioning system of justice” — to borrow from a phrase used by legal scholar SP Sathe in his review of a collected volume of speeches delivered by one of the chief architects of prison rights jurisprudence, Justice VR Krishna Iyer. Azad’s observations on patriarchal institutions as a determinant of incarceration of women prisoners also reinforces the vast gap between the lived realities of women prisoners and the normative ideals articulated by prison rights jurisprudence.

It is important to pay close attention to the fact that often women prisoners are incarcerated along with their children. Azad points out the influence of the harsh conditions on children in prisons, and the neglected state of their education and development. In R.D. Upadhyay v. State of Andhra Pradesh, the Supreme Court had directed state governments to provide a conducive environment in prison for the “proper bio-psycho-social growth of children”. However, as Azad points out, there are still prisons which do not have any facilities for children’s development in their early years.

Azad also reflects on the prison administration’s attitude towards prisoners’ health, which sometimes dissuades prisoners from even complaining owing to the administration’s vengefulness upon being inconvenienced. This is symptomatic of a wider systemic problem within prisons. Research shows that prisoners suffer from poor health in general. Other prison memoirs also reflect on the abysmal state of prison medical care, wherein the treatment of prisoners often depends on the temperament of the jail doctor, or an order of the court. In February 2026, the Madras High Court held periodical medical check-ups as a fundamental right of a prisoner under Article 21. While this is an important decision, the lack of prisoner health research in India makes it difficult to effectively evaluate the impact of jurisprudence.

Conclusion

 Prison memoirs such as those by Azad constitute a vital strand of contemporary prison literature that help penetrate the opacity of carceral institutions. The memoir becomes a tool to understand not only the inversion of established legal principles and diversion from procedure, but also the entrenchment of systemic problems that continue to persist. Thus, this book invites a broader interrogation into the contemporary imagination of procedure as a safeguard and the understanding of carcerality as being rooted in reform. The amenability of the procedure to manipulation and the mere academic existence of prison rights jurisprudence is a far cry from any iteration of justice.