The Indian Constitution does not guarantee the right to privacy as a fundamental right. However, the Supreme Court, in two recent rulings, has included the right to privacy within the ambit of the...
Civil Liberties
The bill intended by the UPA government as a replacement for POTA retains some of the bad features of the repealed legislation. Moreover, in some major ways, as in the onus placed on organisations...
The Indian Constitution assigns matters of legislation related to 'theatres and dramatic performances' exclusively to state governments; this function, in some instances, has been delegated to the...
In September 1996, a Bench of the Supreme Court quashed 15 scandalous allotments of petrol pumps by Satish Sharma, then minister of state for petroleum and natural gas, and ordered him to pay...
There is in law a recognised tort of 'misfeasance in public offices which could be used to file charges against those who were in office at the time of the Gujarat riots.
Both, India and Pakistan have adhered to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which may be deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects. But neither has signed...
The Supreme Court's sharp comments on custodial violence, torture and abuse of police power delivered some months ago demand serious attention. But clearly, they appear to have had little effect...
The disappearance of large numbers of persons in Kashmir, what the UN Declaration on the subject terms as 'enforced disappearance', is a matter of national shame. However, it has not evoked much...
The recent report of John Stevens, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service in UK, has exposed the security forces' collusion with renegade militant bodies in Northern Ireland. The report is...
We need a wider perspective on our anti-terrorism laws which comparison with similar laws elsewhere alone can provide.
Since its offensive against terror began, Guantanamo Bay has been used by the US to detain prisoners and suspected terrorists, denying them all the well-established human rights, specifically the...
When the executive refuses to issue the notification announcing the date a particular law passed by the legislature comes into force, the judiciary is well within its powers to intervene. Yet, there...
The print media, bar sections of the Gujarati press in Ahmedabad, have done the nation proud by its objective coverage of the Gujarat carnage. So have the electronic media. Rattled by the bad press...
It is heartening to see the apex courts of India and Pakistan agreeing on an aspect of the law of defamation which affects the freedom of the press - that the press is free to comment on the conduct...
The Press Council of India’s ‘committee’ under B G Verghese produced a report exonerating army personnel of mass rape at Kunan Poshpora in 1991; however, the victims continue to suffer even today...
