-By Shreyas Sinha Introduction The Latin term ‘mens rea’ refers to the mental element of a criminal act, i.e., a legally-determined state of mind required to convict an individual of a criminal offence. A person can be said to possess the requisite mens rea vis-à-vis a criminal offence when – (1) they are aware that … Continue reading The Mens Rea of Fraud: Lessons from the Great White North
By Abhinav Sekhri Six year old Lalita Kumari went missing from near her house on the night of May 5, 2008. When she did not come back, her father filed a missing persons report. A week later he was told that his daughter had been abducted, and so he filed a complaint with Police Station … Continue reading Lalita Kumari, and Police Discretion at the Stage of Registering an FIR
-Sanjana Gupta & Aditi Roy Introduction Bail can be termed as the procurement of a person’s release from legal custody through an undertaking that one shall remain present at the designated time and place and submit himself to the Court. Bail can be denied only in exceptional circumstances and has to be given as a … Continue reading Setting the paper tiger free – Bail provisions and UAPA
By Abhiraj Das and Nihal Deo Sudan has in April 2020 banned and criminalized Female Genital Mutilation. India is also no less a victim of the practice, but the absence of special legislation and inadequacy of the existing laws has allowed FGM to persist in silence. What is FGM? WHO has defined Female genital mutilation/Cutting … Continue reading Female Genital Mutilation: When Will India Take Concrete Steps?
By Milind Rajratnam and Srishti Bhargav Introduction The healthcare workers across the world are most susceptible to workplace violence, but still their concerns are least discussed and deliberated upon. According to the World Health Organization, around 8% to 38% of healthcare workers suffer physical violence at some point in their careers. A study conducted by … Continue reading COVID-19 – XV: Atrocities against Healthcare Workers- Why India needs a Comprehensive Legislation?
By Kaartikay Agarwal “It is the power of punishment alone when exercised impartially in proportion to the guilt, and irrespective of whether the person punished is the King’s son or an enemy, that protects this world and the next” – Chanakya Reformation of a Penal Code based on 19th-century Victorian ideals has been a constant process … Continue reading Conceptualizing a Kautilyan Criminal Justice System
By Mitali Kshatriya The news is replete with instances of violation of advisories issued by the government to prevent the spread of coronavirus. In the wake of such delinquencies, the state governments are resorting to various penal provisions under the Indian Penal Code (The Code or IPC). s.307 is one of the various sections being … Continue reading COVID-19 – XIV: Examining the Use of ‘Attempt to Murder’ in Times of COVID-19
By Lalit Ajmani It is quite common to witness vexatious litigations that are devised solely to harass and torture the other party. Resultantly, the innocently accused person has to suffer a great ordeal of defending the criminal/civil case and sometimes gets defamed by the vexatious litigation initiated by the other, both for no reasons. Law … Continue reading Different Timelines for Different Defamation Cases
By Bhoomika Agarwal Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status. - David Mamet The events that took place in the last few months have raised a very essential question … Continue reading Law Against Police Brutality
By Sneha Singh Introduction The lockdowns following the COVID-19 pandemic have surged up the number of domestic violence cases among many countries worldwide. The populations were directed to stay indoors at their respective homes as it had been proved to be an effective measure for fighting against the coronavirus. While stopping the spread of the … Continue reading COVID-19 – XIII: Domestic Violence: The Unseen Crisis of the Pandemic
By Abhinav Sekhri On 22.04.2020, Ordinance No. 5 of 2020 was passed to amend the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897. It was a response to the most recent pleas by medical professionals for greater legal protection against physical attacks. I say most recent because this issue has been raised on many a prior occasion, but it only seems to have assumed critical importance … Continue reading COVID-19 – XII: Some Thoughts on the Ordinance to Protect Health Care Workers
By Pallavi Diwakar and Stuti Bhargava Introduction- Situation around the Globe “While there is no doubt as to the fact that our homes provide safety against the onslaught of this growing pandemic, what protects us from the abuse that we face at the hands of our near and dear ones?” While a lot of facilities … Continue reading COVID-19 – XI: Domestic Violence: An Essential Byproduct of COVID-19?
By Abhinav Sekhri On April 22, 2020, a Three Justices' Bench of the Supreme Court decided a reference made to it in Hira Singh [Crl. Appeal No. 722 of 2017, decided on 22.04.2020]. The primary issue before the Court was the correctness an earlier decision by a Two Justices' Bench of the Supreme Court, E. Micheal Raj v. Intelligence Officer [(2008) … Continue reading There are No Right Answers: The Supreme Court and the Purity / Mixture Debate under the NDPS Act
By Keshab Roy Choudhury Introduction The concept of justice is an ever-elusive one. What exactly does one mean when they say they want justice? In the Indian context, the concept of ‘instant justice’ has entered the discourse again post the rape and murder of a 26-year-old doctor in Hyderabad last year. This ‘instant justice’, in … Continue reading Deconstructing Section 46(3) of the CrPC: A Tacit Approval for Encounters
By Nabira Farman and Utkarsh Shubham Does the Veil of Freedom of Speech & Expression Immune the Media from Penal Liabilities? INTRODUCTION When India was already blazing under the communal fire post the introduction of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, the novel CoronaVirus came to make people realize that this battle is not religious. It … Continue reading COVID-19 – IX: A Pandemic for the world, Antagonism for the Indians
By Nishtha Nikhil Gupta The lockdown due to COVID-19 has impacted one and all. The courts are no exception to it. While many courts are not working, yet some others are hearing only urgent and important matters. Even the Supreme Court has been hearing only important cases through video conferencing. The Supreme Court has ordered … Continue reading COVID-19 – VIII: Plea Bargaining- A Simple Solution for Difficult Times
By Devanshu Anada Introduction It was unimaginable for the government of most of the countries that a pathogen not even visible to a naked eye would have the potential to bring even the most developed countries down to their knees and their economies to a virtual standstill. As unprepared the immunity system of our bodies … Continue reading COVID-19 – VII: Is the Indian Legal Framework Capable of Handling the Coronavirus Pandemic
By Tanay Singh and Tanya Rathod INTRODUCTION The term bail essentially means the interim release of an accused from the judicial custody and to place him/her under the custody of some monetary assurance to serve the accused person his right to enjoy the personal freedom. Granting of bail in the Indian criminal justice system has … Continue reading COVID-19 – VI: India’s Decaying Bail System: A Virus Exposes the Truth
By Amrashaa Singh The recent killing of the four accused in the Hyderabad veterinary doctor’s rape case created a huge hue and cry across the nation. While some people praised the incident, others pointed out the human rights violations caused by the incident. Many famous personalities, praised it, including Jaya Bachchan, a Rajya Sabha M.P., … Continue reading Extra-Judicial killings: A solution for preventing crime in Adityanath’s UP?
By Abhinav Sekhri (This is the Fourth Post in a series on the Blog. Previous posts can be accessed here) The previous post expanded upon the officers who dealt with the powers conferred under what, by 1898, was Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code [Cr.P.C.]. The post also elaborated upon the expansion of such powers … Continue reading Section 144 Cr.P.C. — Part IV: Public Order and Political Agitation (1901 to 1920)
By Shreyash Mittal Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Hate the crime, not the criminal.” Introduction The aim of the criminal justice system is the reformation of criminals rather than inflicting punishment on them. Probation is an alternative to the customary form of punishments, where instead of sending the offender into the jail; he is released on … Continue reading The Probation of Offenders Act, 1958- An Extremely Crucial but Underplayed Legislation
By Nishtha Gupta “The safety of the people is the supreme law.” -Markus Tullius, Roman statesman and lawyer The Indian state has recently faced the world’s largest lockdown wherein 1.6 billion people have been subjected to an unprecedented lockdown. This has obviously led to a certain protest in terms of people not following the lockdown … Continue reading COVID-19 – III: Is Use of Lathi by Police During Lockdown Justified?
By Yashwanth J With the onset of nationwide lockdown following the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the coronavirus, various photos and videos have surfaced on the internet and the TV news channels portraying the highhandedness by the police officials against the flouters of the impugned curfew. The Government’s Guidelines on the measures to be taken by … Continue reading COVID-19 – II: Lockdown and the Wave of Police Brutality
By Ashna D After making innumerable attempts to postpone their execution, Mukesh Singh, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh, the four convicts in the Nirbhaya gang-rape case have been hanged to death on 20th March 2020. In recent years, there has been a heightened support in favour of imposing the capital punishment for … Continue reading Looking Beyond Retribution: A Plea To Abolish Capital Punishment
By Anmol Mathur Introduction The Constitution of India guarantees all persons the right to personal life and liberty, equal protection of laws and prohibits any discrimination based on sex. The Constitution is not simply a long, celebrated, big-book of ideas on democracy and civil society, but is a tool for social change in the coming … Continue reading The Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2019 and Gender-Neutral Sexual Offences in India
By Priyadarshee Mukhopadhyay INTRODUCTION “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” - George Orwell. Over the last five years, India has been thunderstruck by a growing number of informal public executions or extrajudicial killings commonly recognized under the term “Mob Lynching”. However, … Continue reading The Epidemic of Mob Lynching in India: Analysing Tehseen S. Poonawalla v. Union of India
By Sehaj Cheema and Kuldeep Garg When the Supreme Court expressly dubbed pollution a tort in 1997,[i] the pronouncement was perhaps prophetic of India witnessing the contentiousness that the law of torts entails. Amongst the controversies that have ensued in the field of India’s environmental laws, a fundamental one is the blurring of the line … Continue reading Amidst Tort & Crime: Quasi-Criminal Liabilities in India’s Anti-Pollution Litigation
By Diya Vaishnav and Nihal Deo Recently, Union Minister Mr. Anurag Thakur and BJP MP Mr. Parvesh Verma received a ban of 72 hours and 96 hours respectively from campaigning for the Delhi Elections. The reason behind the same was the ‘Hate Speech’ that they delivered in their respective rallies in Delhi. While Mr. Thakur … Continue reading The Peril of Hate Speech in India
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