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theleaflet

Crime & Justice / theleaflet

The Tribunals Reforms Act, 2026: An Old Wine and a Recipe for Bad Law

Despite establishing a National Tribunals Commission, the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2026 retains significant executive control over the institutions meant to be insulated from it.

24 Aug 2026 3:12 pm
As Sheikh Hasina Plans Her Return, Can a Tribunal Accused of Fair-Trial Failures Legitimately Try International Crimes? - Part II

The victims of the 2024 Bangladesh violence deserve genuine accountability. But the proceedings against Sheikh Hasina raise cumulative concerns about the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunals constitutional foundation, judicial independence, evidentiary scrutiny and appellate safeguards. India must note that its refusal to extradite need not mean abandonment of accountability.

22 Aug 2026 12:20 pm
Supreme Court Constitutes High-Powered Committee to Probe Police Action Against Jantar Mantar Protesters

The panel, headed by former Supreme Court judge R. Subhash Reddy, will examine allegations ranging from the use of pellet guns and lathi charges to surveillance and violence against female protesters, alongside counter-allegations of property damage and injuries to police personnel.

20 Aug 2026 6:24 pm
On the Domestic Violence Law: How the PWDVA has been domesticated with dubious interpretations

Despite research showing that womens complaints under the Domestic Violence Act are overwhelmingly genuine, courts and lawmakers continue to entertain claims of misuse while the law itself remains starved of the sensitisation, procedure, and political will needed to make it work.

20 Aug 2026 6:17 pm
Supreme Court Refines Bangalore Water Supply

A nine-judge bench, by majority, has refined but not overturned the triple test in Bangalore Water Supply for what counts as an industry under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

20 Aug 2026 2:03 pm
The Heart of AI is Not the Code; It is the Weights: Why Model Weights sit outside conventional Intellectual Property doctrine

As AI value shifts from source code to trained model weights, copyright and trade secret law struggle to keep pace, leaving contract drafting as the last real line of defence

20 Aug 2026 1:50 pm
Declaring Solidarity Criminal: The problematic reasoning of the TISS bail order

The Sessions Courts order, which conflates political solidarity with criminal intent, denies anticipatory bail to two TISS students as it treats slogans demanding the release of undertrials Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, and homage paid to the late Professor G.N. Saibaba, as grounds for suspicion.

19 Aug 2026 8:04 pm
Ctrl+Alt+Deceive: AMU Fudged its Law Placement Data For Years; NIRF Looked the Other Way

Every year, NIRF, India's premier university ranking system under the Education Ministry, publishes a list that students trust and institutions build their reputations around. An RTI based investigation by The Leaflet on Indias largest minority varsity now shows that it misrepresented data and NIRF simply accepted it on face value.

19 Aug 2026 2:16 pm
Orphaned by the State: Why Civil Protection under Article 17 must be decoupled from the Politics of Reservation - Part II

The conflation of affirmative action and anti-atrocity law subjects persons of Dalit lineage exercising religious-freedom to a constitutional paradox and denies them the fundamental promise of social dignity

19 Aug 2026 12:08 pm
On the Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill, 2026: Parliament

The new Amendment turns states plenary taxing powers over minerals into a licence granted at the Centres discretion, setting up a serious constitutional challenge and dealing a fresh blow to fiscal federalism.

18 Aug 2026 2:37 pm
What does Swaraj mean to India

As India marks its 80th Independence Day, a disabled academic reflects on how constitutional silence, judicial charity, and political apathy has kept disabled and transgender lives outside the promise of Swaraj.

17 Aug 2026 7:33 pm
Gandhi and Gen Z

Ambedkar warned that even the best constitutions can fail if those who uphold them fall short. At Jantar Mantar, Gen-Zs Gandhian instinct for self-restraint and co-responsibility showed democracy becoming, once again, a way of life.

15 Aug 2026 11:44 am
Why the Constituent Assembly viewed Integrity of the Examination System as crucial to Self-Government

The Constituent Assembly members never foresaw paper leaks as a crisis in independent Indias education future. But debates on the Public Service Commissions reveal an acute anxiety among the framers that without integrity of the examination process, self-government post British-rule would remain strained.

15 Aug 2026 11:35 am
The Student Movement at Jantar Mantar is a Reckoning with the Republic

Eighty years after Independence, the fight against exam-system collapse, bulldozer raj and communal politics is a continuation of the freedom struggle itself.

15 Aug 2026 11:20 am
498-A and Live-In Relationships: Why is marriage still the reference standard for protection from Intimate Partner Violence?

The Supreme Courts recent ruling upholding criminal liability for cruelty to live-in relationships in the nature of marriage must raise questions on why marriage is still the qualification for critical rights against intimate partner violence.

14 Aug 2026 3:30 pm
The British Premiership: A Speculative Futuristic Sketch

Prefatory Note This brief essay was initially submitted to the 'Notes and Comments' section of The British Journal of Political Sophistry in response to a Call for Papers on 'The Future of British Politics'. The essay was based on deep archival research into the work of the late eminent historian J. B. Morton (Beachcomber) who presented his findings in his By the Way column of the Daily Express from 1924 to 1975. The Editor of BJPS found the article not only 'not suitable for publication in the

12 Aug 2026 8:32 pm
Auditing Delhi

Does Indias heat relief promise truly reach its informal workers? A ground-level and RTI audit reveals that Delhis cooling centres are far removed from actual considerations of informal, domestic and gig workers who cannot stop toiling in the capitals killer heat.

11 Aug 2026 7:45 pm
What the Forum for Human Rights

The Forums seventh Annual Report documents a rekindled militancy following the Red Fort attack, a rise in the profiling and harassment of Kashmiri Muslims, the routine invocation of UAPA and PSA against civilians, and continued stagnation on statehood, alongside a special section on Ladakh and Pakistan-held Kashmir.

11 Aug 2026 7:40 pm
Tarun Tejpal and the search for the

The Goa bench of the Bombay High Courts decision earlier this week convicting and sentencing for ten years of incarceration Tarun Tejpal, former editor of Tehelka magazine, of sexually assaulting a former colleague arrived as a reckoning of the victims thirteen years of a Sisyphean struggle through relentlessness, shaming and facing the regressive churn of our courts. In 2021, eight years after Tejpal was first accused of raping a junior colleague in the elevator of a Goa resort, abusing his p

11 Aug 2026 3:58 pm
Vocabulary as the Cause of Action: The limits of the Supreme Court

The Supreme Courts new Report on reforming judicial language treats sanitising vocabulary as a substitute for resolving the status-based rights those very words were built to define, a blind spot in its approach to sensitivity.

11 Aug 2026 3:48 pm