-ANI/ ThePrint.in The central government on Monday notified the rules under the Criminal Procedure (Identification) Act, 2022 which empowers police to obtain physical and biological samples of convicts and those accused of a crime. The Act authorises a police officer or a prison officer of the Central government, state government or Union territory administration, authorised by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the units under its control, to access the information...

-The Hindu Though much has changed, attention needs to be paid to lingering issues in India’s police agency As India is celebrating 75 years of Independence, the police continue to be in the public gaze, most often for antagonistic reasons. Criminal laws and procedures, though modified, and the shadows of India’s colonial legacy do not appear to leave the police agency any time soon. Changes to the IPC India’s parliamentarians rose to the occasion...

-The Telegraph The media’s culpability is damaging India’s interests Media culpability can damage a country’s interests. Two recent instances will suffice to illustrate the point. The media’s role in recent events triggered by a Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson’s remarks on Prophet Mohammed has received less attention than it deserves. The focus has been on the offending spokesperson. There was mayhem across the land on account of a television news show. The tally...

-India Spend/ Scroll.in While the total number of prison inmates rose by 1% between 2019 and 2020, the number of undertrial inmates increased by nearly 12% Three in four prisoners in India’s jails are under trial, according to government data for the year 2020, the latest year for which such data is available. This is the highest share of undertrial detainees in prison since at least 1995, the earliest year for which...

-The Telegraph The police as the arbiters of communication For a country with serious challenges to tackle, the amount of time and energy of government agencies and courts that is now spent on offence-taking and conspiracy-chasing borders on the ludicrous. Through 2021, the police in various parts of the country sought to criminalize news gathering as well as social media expressions, registering first information reports indiscriminately under various sections of the Criminal...