Author: Ranjeev C Dubey

Dangers of Internet: What is Fake News?

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
When journalist-turned-politician S Ve Shekhar casually forwarded a social media post suggesting that women journalists needed to sleep with their bosses to keep their jobs, he found himself accused of crimes under Sections 504 (Provoking Breach of Peace), 505 (Public Mischief) and 509 (Insulting the Modesty of a Woman) of…

Triple Whammy

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017, reminds me of the doggerel about the Chaubay who went on to become a “Chhabbe” but came back a Dubey! There is grotesque irony in the idea that a law designed to provide security to Muslim women within marriage hastens…

Fee Fixation

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
“Can’t you see,” Pink Floyd’s singer songwriter Roger Waters berated us in 1984, “it all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents.” This must be why Supreme Court senior counsels aren’t celebrities till they make Rs 10 lakh a hearing! This is easy to understand: if you are that…

Why India can’t afford Rohingya refugees

By Ranjeev C DubeyInternational Law
George Bush once quipped that India lived in a very dangerous neighbourhood. He failed to add that moral ambiguity was consequently built into its foreign policy. The Rohingya refugee crisis is only the latest example of this inescapable reality. Not that Rohingya ‘crisis’ is new. The Rohingyas are 100 per…

Triple Equality before God

By Ranjeev C DubeyConstitutional Law
Judges often confront colliding ideologies with the law standing on one side, religion on the other and human empathy in the middle. In 2014, an 18 year old Muslim eloped with a 15 year old and married her. The girl’s mother filed a case of kidnapping, rape and sexual assault.…

Legally Xenophobic

By Ranjeev C DubeyArbitration Law
Predictably, when the Justice BN Srikrishna committee submitted its report to the law ministry last week advising the government to allow foreign lawyers to represent clients in international arbitrations being held in India, the legal community was in an uproar again. Yet again, we lawyers made it clear that we…

Foreign Lawyers: The Global Desi

By Ranjeev C DubeyLegal Profession
When Chief Justice JS Khehar stated on July 8 that he supported the entry of foreign lawyers in India, he drew attention to an issue that has been boosting the testosterone levels in lawyers’ canteens since Prime Minister Narasimha Rao liberalised the economy a mere 26 years back. Clearly, it’s…

NDTV-ICICI Bank case: What’s the inside story?

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law
We live in a world riddled with Moral Ambiguity. Aadhar shouldbring transparency and probity in our society yet our Government has handed over our confidential secrets to private parties in a patently non-transparent way. The judiciary remains the last bastion of hope in a polity that is fast descending into…

The Joint Lender Devastation

By Ranjeev C DubeyRegulation
When the entire banking industry of a country as large as ours is paralysed to a point where it becomes necessary to empower RBI, the banking regulator, “to issue directions to any banking company(ies) to initiate an insolvency resolution process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016”, can we agree…