More teeth to police, not victims
By Colin Gonsalves
In a critique of "The Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005", Colin Gonsalves opines that the Act simply relegates victims to a footnote. For instance, when it comes to sexual violence, it does not recognise the fact that the nature of atrocities committed against women during riots is radically different from those committed during 'normal' times

Tragic decline of criminal jurisprudence
By Dhairyasheel
Cops have been successful in cajoling the media to tout law as too lame to curb crime, or deal with hardened and tough criminals. Thus, the criminal justice system yielded, impatiently trying to achieve not only a higher rate of convictions but also negating past precedents set by the Supreme Court whereby persons accused by the police got a fair chance to prove their innocence. Now the legal protection of accused persons has all but disintegrated because of the higher judiciary's rulings that write off not only their own affirmations made in the past but also guarantees provided under the Constitution to protect an individual's life and liberty. Senior advocate Dhairyasheel Patil cites cases where the highest judiciary has gone against its earlier rulings as, for an example, in one shocking decision which overlooks torture of women accused as "to remove the fear psychosis and to come out with truth" and makes evidence wrested so callously admissible

Impunity impairs Indian Constitution
By KG Kannabiran
How can the blinding of prisoners in Bhagalpur, extra-judicial killings in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, or police encounters elsewhere have the tacit approval and complicity of the State even while the culprits escape the logic of punishment.

Rot in the prisons
By Colin Gonsalves
TApplying even the most retrogressive standards, Indian prisoners are the pits — a level of perversity matched only by our pious, moralistic and sanctimonious preachings abroad. In the land of Gandhiji and non-violence, prisons remain depraved and brutish. Internally the prisoners rot.

Policing the police
By Colin Gonsalves
In India, the police clamour to be freed from political control. Though this may be necessary, unless effective and independent civilian control is introduced first, this force in uniform may hold the entire society to ransom.

Hope flies over an Irish crossing
By Helen Nic an Ri
A new era of peace and democracy in Northern Ireland? Reinstating devolved government from a human rights perspective to end decades of bitterness and violence is what the April accord signifies, wirtes Helen Nic an Ri, as Irish people carve a new chapter in their country's troubled history

Clear the jails first
By Colin Gonsalves
The arbitrary powers to keep a person confined without a guilty verdict is necessary for a State and its police that want to rule by terror. Unfortunately, that's what we follow. Significantly, those who languish in jails are poor people, Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims. Unless serious reforms are implemented, things are not going to improve

Untruth serum
By P Chandra Sekharan
Forensic science experts have pointed out that drugging doesn't necessarily extract truth out of one's system. Hence, when police use coercive methods of interrogation like narcoanalysis they might be violating human right.

Recipe for impunity
By Vrinda Grover
With the police force caught in a credibility crisis, the Supreme Court suggested a new Police Act to replace the 1861 law. Sadly, the Model Police Act brings no hope. Under the garb of reform, the police has staked its claim for a bigger share of State power. Free from executive control, shielded from the ordinary law of the land with virtual unaccountability, the force can pose a serious threat to democratic practices and institutions. We, the people of India, have little reason to celebrate these police reforms.

Terrorism of the police kind
By K Balagopal
Neither the State nor organisations like the NHRC are looking at the issue of police high-handedness, bias and extremities of the law that often take the toll of common man's human rights. Unless we seriously address this issue, the State machinery will continue to persecute, torture and execute innocent people in the name of order.

Binayak Sen: Victim of State vendetta
By Harsh Dobhal
For over two months a civil rights champion has been behind the bars because of the arrogance of the powers-that-be in Chhattisgarh. Harsh Dobhal writes that this is because of the black laws being used by the state to cover up its misdeeds.

A meek, weak NHRC
By Josh Gammon
Throughout its about a decade-and-half-long existence, the NHRC could not become an effective forum for the redress of human rights violations because of the lack of government's commitment to protect rights of its citizens. So it has been content by creating a showpiece in the name of human rights. Now groaning under the weight of a huge backlog of cases, NHRC and its still worse shadows SHRCs need to reinvent themselves in order to redeem their credibility. This is what participants of a national consultation on criminal justice, recently held in New Delhi, felt. A factsheet based on the deliberations by Josh Gammon

A meeting of minds
By Josh Gammon
A national consultation on criminal justice brought together the legal community from all over the country to New Delhi where they discussed moves to rob accused of the protections given in the law

Is NHRC asleep?
By Sabine Nierhoff
A recently published book "From Hope to Despair" by Sabine Nierhoff brought out by People's Watch, concludes that the NHRC has miserably failed in handling complaints of human rights violations in India

Crippled mainstream shuns disability
Suresh Nautiyal
Despite several international and national instruments protecting the rights of differently-abled individuals, not much has changed for them, tells an educational film produced by the Human Rights Law Network team. Suresh Nautiyal reviews the "Access to Rights"

Untouched
Suvi Dogra
India's Dalits suffer a silent apartheid of sorts through the ages. Yet, their plight has been accepted as a norm whereby society's wont has been to crush them and leave them where they are. Suvi Dogra watched a gripping story on Dalits at its maiden screening in JNU and found its message worth recounting

Editorial

Letters to the Editor

Of inhuman bondage
ByParul Sharma
The wheels of justice move invariably to crush the poor who do not have the means to defend themselves despite provisions in the law for free legal aid. The worst tyranny is being faced by children of women prisoners even while scores of undertrials languish in jails without any sign of their trial.

Where have the Narmada waters gone?
By Himanshu Upadhyay
Forget about the larger debate on the gigantic Narmada dam which has displaced tens of thousands, the government has failed to keep its own promises. The truth of the scam is that too many people have been promised drinking water and too many people have been duped.

Climate, cruelty and deaths
By Pragya Vats
Farmers are caught amid harsh weather and a harsher exploitative regime run by goons, landlords and moneylenders in the Bundelkhand region. To add insult to the injury is a state administration that remains unmoved despite cases of suicides by poor farmers, says an ActionAid probe. Pragya Vats puts together its main highlights

Empower people, not the State
ByAbid Shah
It is a proven fact that often the State machinery has a hand behind riots. If laws are not framed to give more power to the victims of communal frenzy, the police may continue to play havoc

The injustice of ignorance
By Pragya Vats
The Report of the Committee on Reforms of Criminal Justice System construes 'the demands of the times' in terms of what a handful and handpicked individuals conceive these to be! Ironically, these in turn, stand equated with 'the aspirations of the people of India'. Thereby, a great opportunity for law reform stands squandered. This has been the stand taken by Professor Upendra Baxi in his critique of Malimath Committee report which was first published by Amnesty International and read out and dicussed at a national consultation on criminal justice in New Delhi.

The right to humanity
By Justice AM Ahmadi
It is not just the State machinery, but even rights organisations must take a more proactive stand against brazen violations like torture and third degree methods in custody, says Justice It is not just the State machinery, but even rights organisations must take a more proactive stand against brazen violations like torture and third degree methods in custody.

A just society through just laws
By Justice Mohammed Zakeria Yakoob
Delving upon his experiences in the legal profession during the apartheid days in South Africa, Justice Mohammed Zakeria Yakoob calls for a relentless pursuit to provide lawful guarantee to ward off encroachments upon citizen's rights in the wake of clamour for stringent provisions to ensure order in the society even in the event of doubts

Tinkering, trivialising, trashing law
By Professor BB Pande
As criminality saps the body politic, a few privileged smart alecks are toying with the idea of reforming criminal justice system so that culprits get trussed and victims feel relief. Yet, Professor BB Pande debunks these claims reflected through the policy documents of previous and this government targeting some of the very tenets of criminal justice system

Deception as data
By Devendra K Budakoti
Hidden behind deceptive figures is the grim reality of eliminated baby girls in Uttrakhand though the state is thought to be better off in sex ratio than its notorious neighbours. Devendra K Budakoti debunks the myth created by a maze of statistics

Crime against innocence
By Megha Bhagat
A child caught amid the big bad world of scare born of HIV and AIDS is left dazed by the callousness of his school in Punjab, reports Megha Bhagat from Fetehgarh Sahib

Hills echo human rights
By Suresh Nautiyal
The struggle for human rights is far from over in the new state of Uttarakhand. Suresh Nautiyal reports on the local organisations' strong will to pressurise the government to respect human rights and protect the environment through sustainable management of natural resources, for their unrestricted exploitation is detrimental to human rights.

Undeterred by death
Abid Shah
Rashid Ali's film journeys through the Tata's history of wresting land from colonial as well as postcolonial governments. Ali's film tells the story of private enterprise at public cost. Such grim economic message may miss the powers-that-be but those who are going to be affected know and narrate this harsh truth through the film.

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