A/HRC/13/42* page 91 incommunicado, and that, when family members attempted to inquire about their relatives, “police and other law enforcement agencies denied having knowledge of the arrests, or simply chased the families away.” 2. India 171. Arbitrary detentions and disappearances have been a longstanding concern in India, particularly in the states in which the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 applies. In its report of 2007 submitted to the Human Rights Council, the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances noted that, as at the end of 2006, there were 325 outstanding cases of disappearances, and that most of the cases reported occurred between 1983 and 2004 in the context of ethnic and religious disturbances in the Punjab and Kashmir regions. It added that “the disappearances allegedly relate to wide powers granted to the security forces under emergency legislation”.343 During the review of India under the universal periodic review mechanism, numerous civil society organizations alleged that the “chronic use of anti-terrorist laws, preventive detention laws and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958 have created a situation where the normal methods of ‘investigation’ have been replaced by disappearances, illegal detention, custodial torture.”344 172. In the wake of the attacks of 11 September 2001, India enacted new counter-terrorism legislation, including the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act of 2002.345 In 2005, the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion drew the Government’s attention to allegations that numerous Muslim men had been illegally detained since March 2003 in the Gayakwad Haveli Police Station in Ahmedabad. Although it was reported that many were subsequently charged, a large number of illegal detainees allegedly remained in custody. There were also reports of a “climate of fear” in the Muslim community in Gujarat, which meant that “most were too afraid to make official complaints about illegal detention or about torture and ill-treatment.”346 The Government rejected these allegations.347 173. In July 2009, however, a leading Indian magazine, The Week, reported that there were at least 15, and perhaps as many as 40, secret detention sites in India, used to detain, interrogate and torture suspected terrorists. A former Government official reportedly confirmed the existence of the prisons, telling the magazine that they were not run directly by the Ministry of Home Affairs, but by security agencies, including the Research and Analysis Wing (the national 343 A/HRC/4/41, para. 216. 344 A/HRC/WG.6/1/IND/3, paras. 12, 14, 17-18. 345 The Act, which was preceded by the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Ordinance in 2001, was repealed in October 2004. New counter-terrorism legislation was enacted by Parliament in 2008. 346 E/CN.4/2005/61/Add.1, para. 129. 347 Ibid., paras. 130-131.