A study finds ambiguities in the law to protect women against domestic violence and lack of knowledge of the Act among relief providers. ON October 26, 2006, Parliament enacted the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, not only to recognise the hitherto unrecognised and latent forms of violence against women in domestic relationships (in and outside marriage), but also to provide a civil remedy to ameliorate the conditions of...

As he juggles between attending phone calls and giving interviews to television journalists promising to put him on prime time ‘live’ on Tuesday evening, Subhash Chand Agarwal, 60, recalls a short trip on a rickety DTC bus from Mall Road to Red Fort in 1967 as a young engineering student. “I had an ugly spat with the bus conductor who refused to give me a ticket for the 20 paise...

She was a minor; her alleged assaulter a man with clout. The police initially turned her away; while a decade later, her case is still on in courts. And while Ruchika Girhotra’s tragic story may have got the nation’s and government’s ear, no one remembers the then 13-year-old Dalit girl who was allegedly gangraped on the night of the Dhuleti festival, a day after Holi, in a Vadodara village by...

From next year, on swearing allegiance to the Queen, all members of Britain’s House of Lords will be required to sign a written commitment to honesty and integrity. Unexceptionable principles, one might say. But, until recently, it was assumed that persons appointed to advise the sovereign were already of sufficient honesty and integrity to do so. They were assumed to be recruited from groups with internalised codes of honour. No...

While finalising a new law to check corruption and increase accountability in the higher judiciary, the Union Law Ministry has also decided to include a comprehensive code of conduct for judges of the Supreme Court and the High Courts. Sources told The Indian Express that this was being done as voluntary attempts by the higher judiciary to lay down a code of conduct had not yielded the desired result. According...