Criminal Law – N South

Are private sting operations legal?

Consider this. An employee of your company has run off with your confidential documents and takes up employment with a competitor. You need to act fast and get a court injunction that prevents him from sharing your valuable trade secrets with your rivals. The company needs evidence to prove the…

Should hijack hoax callers and other nasty pranksters be jailed for life?

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

If it wasn’t for the terrifying reality facing Birju Salla, one could, at first sight, be amused with the news of a lovesick businessman trying to shut down the Delhi office of a major airline in order to compel his reluctant girlfriend to quit her job. Instead, on June 11,…

Negotiable Instruments (Amendment) Bill: Cheque-mate!

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

Amendments to curb cheque bouncing are flawed as they criminalise the victim of the crime when it should be the debtor approaching the court to find a way to stay out of jail. On July 25, 2018, the Lok Sabha approved yet another set of amendments to India’s troubled cheque…

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…

Pul’s perversity tale

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

In history, no one has the last word, but the former Arunachal Chief Minister Kalikho Pul’s suicide note must at least be a kind of judicial full stop. The note is as you would expect a credible suicide note to be: a potent 60 page tale of misappropriation of public…

Screen Sex and Censorship: What the law says

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

Now that we are nearly empty nesters, the maids at home get their fill of TV time. A lot of it is pretty racy stuff, putting me in the impossible position of diving for the Remote every time one of them walks in with the dinner tray. Section 354A of…

Sedition is the new Arranged Marriage

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

When Karl Marx observed in 1852 that history repeated itself, first as tragedy and then as farce, he could have been taking about our sedition law! Consider the absurdity of the situation we face today. Back in college, when my friends and I ranted from time to time about some…

Decriminalising Defamation

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

When the inimitable Subramanian Swamy added his name to a gallery of eminent Indian politicians who have been sued for criminal defamation, he could at least demand that he be taken seriously because he had suffered the mandatory rite of passage! I am not being facetious. An allegation you make…

Persecuting victims: Justice for the emotionally overblown

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

Long before Tarun Tejpal’s legendary libido unfairly dented her credibility; Tehelka’s Shoma Chaudhury devastatingly demolished CBI’s case against Arushi Talwar’s parents back in June 2013. Avirook Sen’s recent book on the subject expands substantially on her critique without necessarily unearthing a great deal of new data. What neither Chaudhury nor…

Reimagining India’s Legal System

By Ranjeev C DubeyCriminal Law

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they must stop to radically rethink their priorities. For nations, we call them inflection points, sometimes cultural transformations. For mature managers, we call them midlife crises! In every case, it’s about testing basic ideological assumptions about what we believe we want, or…