According to NCRB’s Crime in India Report, 2020, on an average 77 rape cases per day were reported across India in 2020, that is, 28,046 cases during the year. However, as is well known, NCRB figures are generally underreported, as they do not account for instances where an official complaint was not registered with the police.
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Commonly referred to as the problem of ‘bootstrapping’, the use of Section 10 poses a simple problem – how can a conspiracy and one’s role in it be proved by first assuming the truth of the existence of such conspiracy and one’s role in it?
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In this episode of the P39A Podcast, Dr. Amrita Ibrahim, Dhanya Rajendran and Hartosh Singh Bal discuss the institutional incentives and assumptions that inform the creation of a media ‘crime story’. The conversation explores the lens that the media adopts in reporting crime, and the perspectives it leaves out, and highlights possible paths towards a more sensitised and ethical coverage of criminality.
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A Division Bench of the Bombay High Court on December 1, 2021 passed an order in the Bhima Koregaon violence case (Sudha Bharadwaj v. National Investigation Agency), granting ‘default bail’ to lawyer-activist Sudha Bharadwaj, but denying bail to the eight other co-accused.
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It is untenable that a prisoner’s caste identity and social status are used to burden them with degrading labour and unequal treatment in a free and democratic country. Casteist roles and discriminatory practices continue to be legally validated by various State Prison Manuals even today.
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The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO) defines all persons under the age of 18 as ‘children’. By making children’s consent irrelevant to the definition of its offences, the statute creates the legal fiction that all sexual contact with a child, so defined, is non-consensual. Green argues that statutory rape offences (which criminalise sexual contact based on age alone, regardless of consent, like POCSO) are instances of overinclusive criminalisation.
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As security agencies continue to indiscriminately invoke provisions of the Act, courts must remember to adopt interpretations jurisprudentially closer to the principle of ‘bail, not jail’. By looking beyond the facts of a given case, the courts are likely to create a more equitable, and accessible, system of justice and ensure opportunities to do complete justice are not missed.
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One of the most extensively debated topics in philosophy and science emerges from the tussle between free will and determinism. This debate has been the subject of numerous films and has added complexity to the storytelling.
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Shabnam and her partner Saleem were sentenced to death in 2010 for the murder of seven members of Shabnam’s family. Over the years, all aspects of Shabnam’s life have become a public spectacle: from the “saga” of Shabnam and Saleem’s “bloody and murderous love” to her pregnancy and the birth of her son. As recently as March 2021, a mainstream news media channel reported on an incarcerated Saleem writing couplets in the memory of Shabnam, deemed his “Anarkali”.
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Evaluating aggravating and mitigating circumstances facilitate determining just sentences. Disregarding the crucial role mitigating circumstances play in the process is a bad precedent: it encourages a narrow reading of the law that supports increased (and not necessarily fair) punishment by Courts across the country.
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This episode of the 39A podcast discusses the science behind forensic DNA profiling and its scientific and legal practice in India. The conversation further looks at the DNA Technology (Use & Application) Regulation Bill, 2019 and how the current version of the Bill overlooks the issues with the forensic science system currently functioning in India.
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Criminal law practitioners from different parts of the country share their experiences on the varied approaches undertaken by each jurisdiction in dealing with the challenges posed by the pandemic and the impact of the transition from physical to online proceedings on access to justice.
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In this episode of The 39A Podcast, Professor Vijay Raghavan and Dr. Anup Surendranath discuss the institutional imagination of prisons in India and the manner in which it has interacted with the COVID-19 pandemic. The conversation looks at whether the measures taken by prisons to control the pandemic were at best management strategies and failed to incorporate ‘right to health’ perspectives.
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In this episode of The 39A Dialogues, Senior Advocate and criminal law practitioner Ms. Nitya Ramakrishnan discusses what sets apart the stringent bail provision under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967 and makes it almost impossible for an accused to secure bail once charged for offences of ‘terrorist activities’ and ‘terrorist organization’ under the Act. She comments on the decision of the Delhi High Court from June 2021, granting bail to three student activists – Asif Iqbal Tanha, Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita while coming to the finding that that their acts of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 did not meet the standard of a ‘terrorist act’ as defined under the UAPA. Ms. Ramakrishnan argues that the decision of the Delhi High Court is logically sound and does not come in conflict with the Supreme Court’s 2019 landmark ruling in Zahoor Ahmad Shah Watali.
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Henry Shue, ‘Torture in Dreamland: Disposing of the Ticking Bomb‘, Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, 2006 The most common debate on torture perhaps pertains to its use in…
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The Constitution of India is a document of aspiration. Conceived as what recent scholarship has called a “break from the (colonial) past”, it is accepted knowledge now that the Indian Constitution aspired to establish a state that aimed to replace colonial authority with a democratic republic and that aimed a state-led revolution against an oppressive social order.
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In 2019, the Ministry of Home Affairs commissioned the All India Citizens Survey of Police Services (‘AICPS’). It is a nationwide public perception survey aimed to suggest measures to ‘provide citizen centric police services’ in India. Its scope includes an assessment of the impact of police services on the public, gauging perceptions of safety and suggestions on measures to improve public satisfaction of the police.
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In this episode of the 39A Dialogues, commemorating the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, human rights lawyers Babloo Lointongbam (Human Rights Alert, Manipur) and Henri Tiphagne (People’s Watch, Tamil Nadu) share their experiences of working, supporting and building relationships with victims of torture.
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Soon after the controversial arrest of environmental activist Disha Ravi by the Delhi Police, her lawyers approached the Delhi High Court in a writ petition, alleging that the police had leaked her Whatsapp conversations to the media in a mala fide act. Before the single bench, the police took the stand that they had shared no information with any media house. The impugned articles and videos of the various channels however claimed to the contrary, as the court observed. By its order dated 19th February 2021, the court issued a set of interim directions to the police and to the respondent media houses, holding them accountable to their own respective professional standards. Pertinently, the court also made an observation that “a journalist cannot be asked to reveal the source”.
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The main objective of India’s penal policy is reform and rehabilitation. Providing prisoners with opportunities to work, and earn, helps in realizing this policy. It empowers prisoners to manage their daily expenses, save for their rehabilitation, even send money to their family, and overall become a responsible citizen.