COMPARATIVE EXCEPTIONAL-SECURITY REGIMES AND JUDICIAL LEGITIMATION: AFSPA IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

The study conducts a comparative legal analysis of exceptional security regimes in India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, with the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA) as the primary analytical referent. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's theory of the state of exception and comparative constitutional law scholarship, the study examines how emergency-inflected legislation is institutionalised within formally constitutional orders, how courts engage with or defer to such regimes, and how impunity—whether formal or functional—is reproduced through legal and institutional structures. The analysis demonstrates that India's AFSPA, Sri Lanka’s Prevention of Terrorism Act 1979 (PTA), and Pakistan’s Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulations 2011 share a common functional architecture despite doctrinal differences in that each exceptionalises territory or populations, expands security-force powers beyond ordinary criminal procedure, creates barriers to accountability, and is sustained through judicial validation, deference, or structural incapacity. The paper argues that judicial supervision of exceptional force does not, by itself, vindicate the rule of law when courts leave intact the institutional structures that authorise broad coercive power and shield state agents from meaningful accountability. The findings yield recommendations for legislative reform, judicial recalibration, and international human rights engagement across the three jurisdictions.