As a democratic society, it is expected that India’s authorities follow the rule of law. This includes the assumption that governance will not be arbitrary, especially when it comes to criminal law. This element is important because criminal law has the power to destroy lives, as a judge recently reminded a group of college students who had participated in a protest meet.
Why individuals attending a protest should be charged with a crime in the first place is a separate issue, but that is how things are here. The casual application of criminal law by the State and then the individual’s struggle to fight for an extended period of time is just assumed by Indians to be the way things are. This is special to us: it cannot be natural that in the mother of democracy, citizens are afraid of the police and the courts and the State in general. There is nothing new in this and ‘police ka chakkar’ is a term cinema has used for as long as one can remember.
What I wanted to discuss was something different, which has taken root and is now a part of India’s democracy. Two headlines from this week will illustrate what is meant. The first is: 'Allahabad HC criticises Uttar Pradesh Police for practice of shooting accused persons in legs’. The subhead reads: ‘Such conduct is wholly impermissible, as the power to punish........

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