Innocence-based crime dramas in their aim to present individual stories of injustice can undercut deeper criminal justice issues. Given the power of visual media in conveying ideas, it is very important that these ideas are carefully chosen. More so, when dealing with issues as complex as crime and punishment.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.