Criminal Justice

A deluge of videos document the Delhi police resorting to pellet shots, nail-studded lathis, tear gas, and even assaulting women protestors on July 20. By every metric, it impinged the principles of proportionality and minimal use of force.

The latest data tracker by the Human Rights Measurement Initiative found that when it came to torture and ill treatment, arbitrary arrest, extrajudicial killing and forced disappearance, India performed tangibly worse than its South Asian neighbours.

In a case arising from a death in a State-run mental health facility, a bench led by Justice Manish Pitale has laid down that compensation for custodial deaths must follow a logical, statutory formula and that the State’s existing policy of paying a fixed sum is woefully inadequate.

Fifteen years after Anti-Human Trafficking Units were envisioned as India’s frontline institutional response to trafficking, a new report by Sanjog finds them overburdened, underfunded, and structurally fragile with 47,000 children still untraced and conviction rates that are, in several states, zero.

As the NHRC’s credibility builds on a considerably shaky ground in the past few years, Justice Atul Sreedharan’s criticism of the Commission for selectively dabbling in matters beyond its scope is far from new.

With hate speech events averaging four a day and a nine-year-old Law Commission recommendation still unheeded, the Supreme Court's refusal to act meaningfully leaves the Constitution’s promise of equal protection suspended between two branches of government.

Six years after a father and son were brutally tortured and killed in custody, a trial court has finally convicted nine Tamil Nadu policemen. But amidst a breakdown of accountability institutions across India, what does the future of custodial violence in India look like?

In its 598 page judgment delivered last week, which discharged Arvind Kejriwal and 22 other accused, a Delhi court ruled that the evidence did not inspire “grave suspicion”, failing to make a prima facie case.