Our work on forensics seeks to promote the use of scientifically valid and reliable forensic evidence for the purposes of criminal investigation and prosecution. Lack of manpower, infrastructural inadequacies and organisational mismanagement are the main reasons for the sub-par functioning of government forensic science laboratories.

Currently, there is no legislative framework to regulate the functioning of forensic laboratories in India or enforce any quality standards. This leads to variance in practices adopted by investigative agencies and forensic laboratories across different states. On the part of the judiciary, there has been little engagement on the admissibility and weight of forensic evidence guided by scientific validity and reliability.

In order to build a sustainable and reliable model for Indian forensics, the law and practice on expert evidence must be revamped. This will not only ensure the use of accurate and reliable evidence in casework but also affect broader change towards improving existing standards and procedures followed in forensic laboratories.

As per the Prison Statistics India report of the National Crime Records Bureau (2024), 72.6% of the prisoners incarcerated were undertrial prisoners, with 3 out of every 4 prisoners being undertrials. The vast majority of prisoners languishing in jails belong to marginalised sections of society as well.

The elimination of such systemic inequities is of critical importance; however, till such time, effective legal representation for such prisoners lies at the heart of Constitutional values of equality and access to justice.

Legal aid structures have been set up by the State under the aegis of the Legal Services Authority Act, 1987. In order to facilitate the efforts of legal aid structures across the country, the Project 39A team seeks to engage in proactive litigation efforts, combining in-depth research, analysis and legal expertise through our legal representation efforts before the Courts.

During the course of representing prisoners, particularly those on death row, mental health concerns assume significant importance — from understanding the effects of the carceral system and the possibility for reform, to examining the mitigating circumstances characterising the alleged crime and the prisoner, particularly in the context of sentencing.

The criminal justice system aims to account for the mental state of accused persons during the course of the trial and the sentencing phase. However, its understanding of mental health and its impact on prisoners continues to remain archaic and uninformed by developments in forensic and clinical psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. This has a detrimental impact on the reformative process as well as the rights of prisoners to avail of the defences available to them during trial and sentencing.

Therefore, in close collaboration with experts across various fields, we aim to bridge the gap between criminal law and the domains related to mental health, and integrate a rights-based approach within the criminal justice system throughout the course of the trial, at the stage of sentencing and in rehabilitation efforts.

Project 39A was envisaged with a view to put forth a principled challenge to the death penalty, and to place fetters on the premeditative state-sanctioned violence that is endorsed by such irreversible punishments, meted out against convicts who invariably form part of the most vulnerable groups in our society.

Through our litigation efforts, we seek to challenge both the conviction and the sentence imposed on such prisoners, across all levels of the judiciary, and to put up a robust defence against executive overreach. We also aim to develop a practice of conducting a detailed study into the mitigating factors of convicts, through interviews with prisoners and their families, by our team of lawyers, psychiatrists and other experts.

We also seek to conduct thorough empirical research on the administration of the death penalty, grounded in an interdisciplinary approach through an active engagement with the law, penal philosophy, criminology, forensic science, economics, psychiatry and sociology.

Our work has made us well aware of the pervasive presence of torture within the Indian criminal justice system. It has forced us to confront the realities of custodial torture and given us insight into the ways in which in-built checks; such as medical examination by doctors and the right of the accused to be presented before a Magistrate; have routinely failed.

An imperfect system with no modernisation of the police force encourages the use of torture techniques in investigations to secure convictions. Despite being inadmissible, torture-based confessions find their way into evidence through Section 27 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872. While India has signed the UN Convention against Torture, it has not ratified it to date. As part of our efforts, Project 39A aims to shed light on the rampant and pervasive practice of torture within Indian jails and seek to facilitate access to justice and healing for prisoners made to undergo torture, and to undertake efforts to hold perpetrators of torture to account.

The Supreme Court's recognition in DK Basu v. State of West Bengal (1997) of the State's obligation to prosecute instances of custodial violence has rarely translated into accountability; the burden to pursue prosecution invariably falls on victims or their families. Initiating criminal proceedings against a public servant requires prior governmental sanction, creating a brazen sense of impunity amongst the police force.