Pendency in the Indian Criminal Process: A Creature of Crisis or Flawed Design?

More than two crore cases are pending across trial courts in India today, and a majority of these are criminal trials. Despite legislative innovation in 1973 designed to achieve speedy case disposition and the introduction of plea-bargaining in 2005, the rise in case pendency has continued unabated. This paper argues that while reform efforts have primarily focused on enhancing supply-side factors more judges, more courts, more time it is clear that such an approach has proved insufficient for dealing with the problem. Together with this, a closer look must be had at how the Indian criminal process is designed. This helps us appreciate how various facets of the system engender, if not promote, delays. For the State to realistically hope to contain delays in the trial courts, appreciating and resolving these design flaws is as necessary if not more as increased government spending on the judiciary and imposing time-limits on litigants

Decolonising Criminal Law?

On August 11, the last day of the ongoing session of Parliament, the Indian Government tabled a notice that it wished to introduce three new bills on the Floor of the House for consideration. These were proposed statutes to replace the holy trinity of Indian criminal law: The Indian Penal Code of 1860, the Criminal Procedure Code of 1973, and the Indian Evidence Act of 1872, were to be replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam respectively. Even though the reform was marketed as an attempt to break from the colonial origins of criminal law, it actually represents a resurgence of the colonial-style authoritarian approach, rather than an effort to build upon the relatively modest progress made half a century ago in advancing individual freedom and civil rights.</p

The Good, The Bad and The Adulterous: Criminal Law and Adultery in India

Adultery is a crime in India, punishable with up to five years imprisonment under Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860. When you took this fact in, perhaps like me your first reaction was outrage at the State\u27s apparent intrusion into the seemingly private sexual realms of life. Such prudes, those Legislators: imposing their moral compass on the unsuspecting citizenry. In truth, it is a bit more complicated, though I argue that the initial assessment is not far off. The paper begins considering principles guiding criminalisation of conduct, to determine whether some principled justifications exist for criminalising adultery. I then move to the substantive section of the paper: arguing that Section 497 must be repealed by the Legislature for inter alia perpetrating invidious discrimination between sexes