-The Hindu More significant than the issue of whether women should be allowed entry into the Sabarimala temple is the question of whether secular judges ought to be the ones making that call. The more the state takes over the task of social reform, the less likely is the desired change to emerge from within the society Last week, the Supreme Court declared that it would hear a public interest litigation (PIL)...

-The Indian Express While Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands display high numbers of criminal activity, India stands with Yemen and Lebanon in the lower zone. Last month, when women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi was pushing through amendments to Juvenile Justice Act in Parliament that would lower the age of culpability as an adult from 18 to 16, she cited a rising number of crimes by juveniles. In the year...

-Frontline The NCRB data used to justify the new law bringing down the age of responsibility for criminal action are open to interpretation. Often the same data can be interpreted in different ways to arrive at contrary conclusions. Portions of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data have been quoted ad nauseam by the government and the media alike to justify the changes made in the juvenile justice law. Experts from the...

-The Indian Express NCRB figures also show that over the last ten years, the juvenile crime rate fluctuated marginally from 1% in 2004-05 to 1.2% in 2008 and down to 1% in 2010. As the government prepares to implement the amended Juvenile Justice Act and consider those above 16 who commit “heinous crimes” as adults, it will do well to revisit its own data for some crucial reminders. Data from the National...

-The Hindu A complex picture emerges from the analysis of a year of Mumbai sessions court rulings on sexual assault: false cases foisted by parents, wide variation in the sentences, societal prejudices and vulnerabilities at play, and a tendency for investigating high-profile cases with greater rigour Over half of all sexual assault cases decided by Mumbai’s sessions courts in 2015 involved either parents filing cases against young couples who had eloped, or...