In a country where inter-departmental coordination hardly takes place in the government, a joint exercise undertaken by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is bearing fruits. The NCRB has started coordinating with the RBI for collection and sharing of Fake Indian Currency Note (FICN) data. The new tables, which have been introduced in the NCRB's annual publication on crime, reveal that although the...

-The Hindu Low conviction rates and a lack of a lawful definition of crime mark criminal administration in India Police reform in India has been concerned with political interference ever since the landmark Supreme Court judgement, in 2006, on the subject. The focus should really be on reorganising criminal administration. The annual publication of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), “Crime in India 2016”, which was released recently, presents a dismal picture of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked for details of members of Parliament alleged to have crime records and the status of trials pending against them following claims that more than one in every three lawmakers in Parliament had criminal antecedents. Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Navin Sinha, who were hearing a batch of petitions seeking a lifetime ban on convicted persons from contesting Assembly or parliamentary elections, asked petitioner...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court has directed all the states and Union territories to set up special centres to record the statements of blind, deaf or mute witnesses so that people accused of crimes cannot get away citing improper examination of such witnesses. The bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit passed the recent order while reversing the acquittal of a Maharashtra resident who had raped a 14-year-old deaf...

-The Indian Express Move to criminalise cyber speech will add impunity to power How to police a cyber space that has acquired the instincts of Frankenstein’s monster? In pursuit of answers, an expert committee submitted an interim report to the Union Home Ministry a couple of weeks ago. The recommended amendments to the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are noteworthy for two reasons. One, they bring within the ambit of IPC (through amendments...