Advocate Jaspal Singh Manjhpur

Advocate Jaspal Singh Manjhpur is a Punjab lawyer who defends people booked under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and who has also argued the cases of the Bandi Singhs, the Sikh prisoners whose release is demanded. Newslaundry reported in 2022 that he represents most of the UAPA accused in Punjab. He was himself arrested in a UAPA case, spent almost eighteen months in jail and was acquitted in 2014.

What he has argued

• The numbers: from court orders, jail records and media reports, he counted 112 instances of the UAPA being invoked in Punjab since 2009, with only three convictions, two of them overturned by the High Court and an appeal pending in the third (Newslaundry, 2022). The Tribune reported in November 2020 that nearly 400 people had been booked in Punjab and that there had been only one conviction in 11 years. The two figures count people and cases, and cover different periods.
• The pattern: he says the cases follow a template of informer inputs, claims of Khalistani terror and misread social-media activity, that the texts look copied and pasted, and that arms are often shown as recovered (Newslaundry; The Tribune).
• Due process: he says the law requires an investigating officer of at least DSP rank and government approval before charges are framed, and that these rules are often ignored, which prolongs detention (Newslaundry).
• The law itself: he calls the UAPA a police tool that followed the abolition of POTA and TADA, and calls the cases a sham (The Tribune, 2020).
• The Bandi Singhs: The Tribune reported in February 2023 that he had been handling their cases long before the dharnas began. He points to five police personnel, a former SSP among them, sentenced to life for fake encounters and released after two to four years, and asks why the Bandi Singhs cannot be released too. Of the 21 Bandi Singhs the Qaumi Insaaf Morcha was seeking to free, nine had received regular parole for six to ten years.

An unnamed official quoted by The Tribune in 2020 attributed the acquittals to the difficulty of proving that legally received money was terror funding, loopholes in investigation and inconsistent witness statements. Manjhpur's figures and views are his own, as reported.

What he is known for. The press turns to him for figures on UAPA cases in Punjab and for the legal case for releasing the Bandi Singhs.