India's harsh anti-terror law comes under rare scrutiny

India’s harsh anti-terror law is coming under rare scrutiny

NEW DELHI -- Mohammed Irfan was 24 and newly married. Business was brisk at his modest battery shop. And within two months he was expecting the birth of his first child. All seemed well, until a counterterrorism squad in August 2012 entered his store in Nanded, a city in India's Maharashtra state, and arrested him for allegedly plotting to kill Indian politicians. For the first few months, he waited for India's legal system to prove his innocence. But the prospects of an acquittal soon turned grim when he was charged under the country's harsh anti-terror law. Irfan was finally released in June 2021 after an Indian court acknowledged he was wrongly jailed. By then, he had already spent nine years in prison.