Prior to the passage of this bill, India did not have a domestic anti-piracy law on the books. The country used sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to prosecute those accused of piracy. However, this came with jurisdictional problems as those codes only applied to India’s territorial waters that extend only 12 nautical miles from India’s coast.
India also signed on to the UN Convention on the Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS) in 1995 which has some provisions for anti-piracy. An earlier effort to pass a domestic law to combat piracy during 2012 did not come to fruition.
The bill, which is set to become law, defines piracy as “any illegal act of violence, detention, or destruction committed against a ship, aircraft, person or property, for private purposes, by the crew or passengers of a private ship or aircraft."
The jurisdiction of the bill applies to the waters adjacent to or beyond India’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which stretches about 200 nautical miles from India’s coast. It also includes the EEZ.
The bill was also once unclear on matters of territorial jurisdiction. While domestic law applies to territorial waters and this new bill applied to waters beyond India’s EEZ, it was unclear which provisions apply to the EEZ itself. The earlier Piracy Bill, introduced in 2012, had included the EEZ in its ambit. This debate was settled when Minister Jaishankar accepted amendments to include the EEZ within the bill’s remit.
The bill was notable for the heavy punishment it imposed for acts of piracy, which can range from life imprisonment to a death sentence
The particular provision of a mandatory death sentence had attracted attention in the original 2019 bill. It caused some controversy as it was not apparent whether the provision was consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling that mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional. In accordance with these concerns, the provision was removed from the bill passed by both Houses.
Piracy offences have also been made extraditable under the provisions of this bill. If India has an extradition treaty with countries, accused offenders can be transferred more easily.
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