-Outlook Journalistic activities should be kept out of the purview of the proposed right to privacy law, a government appointed expert panel has suggested. The group headed by retired Justice A P Shah, in its report, suggested that publication of personal data for artistic and journalistic purposes need not be considered as infringement of privacy under the proposed legislation. Besides, the group suggested that government could exempt application of privacy law in case...

-The Hindu The conviction rate for every kind of crime is in free fall, engendering a breakdown of law that no republic can survive Even criminals, back in 1953, seemed to be soaking in the warm, hope-filled glow that suffused the newly free India. From a peak of 654,019 in 1949, the number of crimes had declined year-on-year to 601,964. Murderers and dacoits; house-breakers and robbers — all were showing declining enthusiasm...

-The Hindu Jamia Teachers’ report reveals framing of several innocents The Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association has in its latest report titled “Framed, Damned, Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell” chronicled 16 cases in which most of those arrested were accused of being operatives and agents of various terrorist organisations, only to be acquitted later of all charges by the courts. In some of these cases the courts even held the police...

-The Times of India The Union health ministry is pushing to decriminalize the act of attempting suicide, which currently is an offence under Section 309 of the IPC with a punishment of up to one year in jail and a fine. The new Mental Health Care Bill 2012, that is expected to be tabled in the winter session, aims to introduce a provision saying "no complaint, investigation or prosecution shall be entertained...

-The Economic Times "Sedition" is a legal construct from less enlightened times, when the sovereign power claimed a divine sanction and subjects were expected to live in awe and fear. So what is republican India doing, in its seventh decade, in bringing a charge of sedition against a self-publishing cartoonist with a propensity for scatology and lurid imagery? A convulsive attack of folly that the agencies of the Indian state have...