Provisions such as remission, parole, and furlough provide imprisoned individuals with something to look forward to and play a crucial role in their process of reformation exclusionary policies need to be interrogated
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While justice has been done in this case, difficult questions on state remission policies remain.
Instead of decolonising criminal law, these Bills entrench colonial logic — where the state’s paramount interest is to control the people to the maximum extent. Many of the positive aspects of the Bills depend on fundamental transformations in our criminal justice system. Through its emphasis on timelines and the expanded use of technology during investigation and trial, the BNSS imagines a criminal justice system that will be committed to fairness and efficiency.
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The pursuit of accountability should not translate into a demand for convictions at all costs as it risks weakening an already broken criminal justice system.
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Ghulam Mohd Bhat, who has been accused of terror financing under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, was granted bail by a Special Court in Jammu on the condition that Bhat wears a GPS tracker around his anklet
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The narrative of decolonisation surrounding the Bills must not be seen in isolation from developments in other areas of criminal law that are contemporaneously pushing us back into colonial ways and outcomes of lawmaking
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Understanding the dynamics of the social production of crime raises difficult questions about the obsessive and singular focus of criminal law on individual criminal responsibility. What role and weight must we assign to environmental factors in engendering and perpetuating conditions that lead to crimes?
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The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, through Clause 69, proposes to criminalise sex which is based on the promise to marry when there was no intention of fulfilling the same. While the clause also covers “deceit”-based sex beyond the promise to marry, the focus here is on cases where there is a promise to marry.
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What does the stated effort, through the proposed legislation, to overhaul the criminal justice system really achieve — or not achieve? What must be done to bring about the critical changes that are needed?
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Since 2013, India has seen a consistent legislative expansion of the death penalty for sexual offences including the introduction of the death penalty for non-homicidal child rape. However, the death penalty remains a discretionary and exceptional punishment in law and life imprisonment is the default sentence for capital crimes.
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On 27 March 2023, 28 years after Niranaram Chetanram Chaudhary alias Narayan was incarcerated for the murder of seven people, the Supreme Court declared that he was a child of 12 at the time of the crime, which meant the maximum sentence he should have received under Indian law when convicted in February 1998 was three years. Narayan spent 25 of his incarceration on death row before release.
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The search for the “least painful method” is ultimately an endeavour in how much cruelty we are willing to tolerate. It is about our collective willingness to inflict cruelty on an individual while wanting to appear otherwise.
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The last few days have been interesting for the death penalty in India. The Supreme Court (SC) commuted the death sentence of Sundar alias Sundarajan because the possibility of his reform could not be ruled out; it ordered the release of a death row prisoner Narayan Chaudhary because he was 12 at the time of the arrest (he spent 25 years on death row); and it saw a discussion on the logistics and methods of executing a death sentence.
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The referral order to the Constitution Bench highlights the lack of a uniform sentencing framework and sidesteps specifying the issues that need consideration.
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The year 2022 exemplified the confusion roiling death penalty sentencing in India. Consider the following developments — trial courts handed out the largest number of death penalties in India in over two decades last year, even as the Supreme Court (SC) confirmed just two sentences.
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Eight men sentenced to death were acquitted over a year by the Supreme Court, revealing lapses by police, prosecution, lower and high courts, even falsification of evidence and its acceptance. These men spent an average of 10 years in jail before being acquitted. These cases are testament to the fact that the criminal justice system can condemn innocents to death. By merely acquitting these men, the Supreme Court has not truly set things right.
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In September 2022, the Supreme Court of India acknowledged concerns about the capital sentencing framework and ordered the setting up of a Constitution Bench to review it. 42 years after the framework was formulated in Bachan Singh v. State of Punjab (1980),[1] the Court is looking to plug the gaps and reform it to provide a “meaningful, real and effective” opportunity for convicts to be heard regarding sentencing.
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