The Times of India • 27th October 2021

Aryan Khan arrest shows the failure of law - Times of India

The Indian Express • 10th July 2021

The routinised evil of bureaucracy that led to Father Stan Swamy’s death

Where to begin apportioning blame for Father Stan Swamy’s death? How to fix accountability for actions, both institutional and individual, for guilt that is both historical and specific to today?

TheQuint • 29th May 2021

Tarun Tejpal Case: When a Sexual Assault Survivor Was Put to Trial

(Trigger warning: Descriptions of rape/sexual assault as reflected in the judicial record.) The judgment adopts deeply flawed lines of reasoning that exemplify the system’s failures to protect sexual assault survivors, particularly when faced with power imbalances.

The Indian Express • 6th May 2021

At the state’s mercy: ringing the Covid alarm in Delhi’s prisons

Last week, five prisoners in Delhi died of COVID-19. As Delhi continues to face over 25,000 new cases and 300 deaths daily, its prisons are the most overcrowded they have ever been, and have the highest occupancy rate in the country. With little to no data from jail authorities on the current prevalence of testing, and complete apathy from courts on prison conditions, fears of an unchecked spread of infection and rising death toll loom large.

The Indian Express • 9th March 2021

The state’s power to ban is expanding. It must be challenged

The UAPA has run riot with banning regimes throughout its 54-year history. Today it provides multiple ways to ban organisations. Worryingly, each regime has come with greater powers for the state and fewer safeguards for individuals, whittling away basic liberties.

The Wire • 16th December 2020

One Year On, No Accountability for Delhi Police's Terrifying Impunity at Jamia

A year after the police violence at Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), the official narrative remains stubbornly resistant to reality. The police assault on Jamia on December 15, 2019, was documented in-depth and yet mandatory procedures for investigating police brutality have not been followed. The official narrative has succeeded in shielding police impunity through a haze of paltry excuses – not entirely unexpected when the police are tasked with investigating themselves.

The Indian Express • 30th November 2020

Existing bail regime, loaded against poor and underprivileged, needs urgent reform

The speed with which Arnab Goswami was recently granted bail has thrown into sharp relief the multitudes for whom such quick access to justice will never exist. In the absence of large-scale reform, however, we will continue with a regime that in its daily reality both horrifies and numbs.

Scroll.in • 30th June 2020

Four months later, Delhi communal violence FIRs are still not public. Here’s why this is troubling

During episodes of mass violence, states fundamentally change the nature of what transpired by suppressing or manipulating the first record of crimes. Accounts of their own complicity remain relegated to scattered news articles and civil society reports. We have few means to work towards justice and recompense for crimes that are not written down as crimes in the first place.

Caravan • 27th June 2020

A Special Injustice: Special courts will fall short until there is impartial investigation into Delhi violence

Reports from previous incidents of mass violence and from Delhi this year highlight a more fundamental issue—the role of the state both during the violence and after. If the state is a passive onlooker or complicit in violence, it can hardly be expected to ensure an impartial investigation. Special courts will remain ineffective until this larger issue is addressed.

Livemint • 22nd June 2020

Why the harsh bail provisions of UAPA have lived on

Overly broad offences and onerous bail conditions effectively condemn many to years of incarceration without trial. But amid criticism of the continued custody of activists under the Bhima Koregaon and Delhi violence cases, it is important to remember that such criticism had led to a repeal of similar provisions in the past, only for them to come back in even more insidious and dangerous ways. Draconian measures that the state itself agreed should be temporary have over the years been made permanent.

12th June 2020

Silence and 'Pragmatism': Skirting the Bail Conditions in the UAPA

The history of personal liberty, as a judge from another time had said, is largely the history of insistence upon procedure. Not so with the harsh bail provision under the UAPA, where liberty has oft been secured by ignoring it.

The Hindu • 22nd May 2020

Rampant arrests in time of lockdown

As the first month of lockdown draws to a close, large-scale arrests during this time in relation to the February violence in Delhi have eviscerated the fundamental rights of many.

FRONTLINE • 25th October 2019

New Act UAPA: Absolute power to state

ON August 14, the Government of India notified amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, empowering itself to designate individuals as “terrorists” without providing them any effective redress. The sheer brazenness of these changes attracted considerable attention.

FRONTLINE • 25th October 2019

UAPA tribunal upholds ban: The case of SIMI

RECENT amendments to the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967, garnered considerable attention, unsurprisingly, since they allow individuals to be designated “terrorists” without effective redress. But their coverage eclipsed another event around the same time, which reveals with great force the pernicious workings of the Act. A UAPA tribunal upheld the eighth successive ban on the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), ensuring its near-continuous proscription since 2001.

Hindustan Times • 9th August 2019

The UAPA amendments: What it really means

On August 8, 2019, the President assented to amendments to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967, introducing a set of changes to an already draconian law. The most fundamental of these changes empowers the government to designate individuals as terrorists, merely if it believes so, leaving little to no recourse for them to protest their designation.

Live Law • 20th May 2019

A Misuse Of Power: BCI's Condemnable Response To The Complaint Against The CJI

On May 15th, LiveLaw reported that the Chairman of the Bar Council of India (BCI), Manan Mishra, raised concerns over women taking undue advantage of the law to falsely implicate men in cases of gender-based violence. These comments are the latest in a series of troubling statements from the BCI in the wake of the sexual harassment complaint against the Chief Justice of India (CJI). It bears repeating that the complainant's only ask has been for a fair inquiry into her complaint. Yet it is in r

The Hindu • 21st May 2018

Steering reform in clogged courts

The spotlight was on the Bombay High Court in early May when one of its judges sat well past midnight hearing cases before the month-long summer break kicked in. While this was a rare occasion in the court’s 156-year history, the incident highlights the systemic issues common to courts in India.

The Financial Express • 27th February 2018

Breaking the glass ceiling in judiciary

Advocate Indu Malhotra’s recent recommendation to the Supreme Court has rekindled discourse on the need for greater gender diversity within the judiciary. If appointed, Malhotra will be only the seventh woman Supreme Court judge since its constitution in 1950, and will also be the first woman promoted directly from the bar to the Supreme Court bench. The state of gender representation in the High Courts is similarly worrying: currently, less than 10% of the judges in the High Courts are women.

Economic And Political Weekly • 31st October 2017

A Womb of One’s Own: Privacy and Reproductive Rights

On 24 August, 2017, a nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India (hereafter SC or Court) unanimously affirmed privacy as a fundamental right under the Constitution (Justice K S Puttaswamy v Union of India 2012a).

Firstpost • 27th September 2017

Farooqui acquitted in rape case: Delhi High Court's 'shoddy' reasoning of consent is confused and dangerously absurd

This Monday, the Delhi High Court acquitted Mahmood Farooqui of raping a Columbia University researcher in 2015, reversing the lower court's decision.