The right of private defence in Indian criminal law is not a modern construct; it is a direct descendent of the Indian Penal Code 1860 drafted under Macaulay’s Law Commission, shaped and influenced by English Common Law assumptions about the violence and self defence in the mid nineteenth century. An act done in the exercise of Private defence is not an offence, provided sudden, visible danger by stranger, imminent threat to bodily harm, the utilization of reasonable force in reaction of that danger and absence of a safe opportunity to withdraw. Section 96 to 106 of the Indian Penal corresponding with Section 34 to 44 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 codified this logic This becomes far less clean and debatable in case of Battered Women Syndrome when the “stranger” is a husband and the danger has been present for years rather than seconds where it describes a psychological reality shaped by cumulative, cyclic trauma ,one in which a woman's perception of danger is calibrated not to the moment of attack but to a pattern learned overs years of abuse and mental, physical trauma for women.
Empirical data underscore the scale of this doctrinal blind spot: the National Family Health Survey (2019–21) found that more than one in four Indian women aged eighteen to forty-nine has experienced some form of domestic violence, with husbands consistently identified as the most frequent perpetrators of such violence within marriage.[1] Because Battered Women Syndrome is theorised as a response to precisely this kind of sustained, intimate violence, the gap between the statutory imminence requirement and the lived experience of a significant proportion of Indian women is not a marginal doctrinal curiosity but a recurring feature of the criminal justice system.
The architectural stability of India’s retail credit ecosystem has been profoundly disrupted by the intersection of smartphone ubiquity, data-driven underwriting, and regulatory arbitrage. While traditional credit delivery mechanisms—ranging from scheduled commercial banks to non-banking financial companies (NBFCs)—operate within a highly codified, risk-averse supervisory matrix managed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), an expansive, shadow parallel economy has flourished. This shadow network comprises unregulated entities that leverage digital infrastructure to extend credit outside the perimeter of prudential oversight[1]. The proposed Banning of Unregulated Lending Activities (BULA) Bill represents the state’s ultimate legislative counter-offensive. It aims to establish an absolute statutory prohibition on any credit-extending activity that lacks the explicit imprimatur of an official regulator. However, by choosing a sweeping prohibitory mechanism rather than a nuanced regulatory or licensing framework, the draft bill risks colliding with fundamental constitutional guarantees, disrupting federal legislative competence, and aggravating the very socio-economic vulnerabilities it seeks to cure.
The BULA Bill remains, at the time of writing, in draft form. The Department of Financial Services released it for stakeholder comment on 13 December 2024 and kept the initial comment window open until 13 February 2025, and it has not yet been formally introduced as a Bill in Parliament.[2] This procedural posture matters for the analysis that follows: because the text remains open to revision before formal introduction, the constitutional and federal vulnerabilities identified in this paper are not academic post-mortems on a settled statute but live drafting choices that Parliament retains a genuine opportunity to correct.
Today traditional arranged marriages in India, which was historically a sacred and indissoluble union between families rather than just individuals, is now undergoing a significant transformation. This Research paper addresses the question to what extent have demographic imbalances, economic transformations, educational expansion, and technological disruptions contributed to the major decline of traditional arranged marriage in India as a universal institution, and how do these factors vary across class, region, and gender. Synthesizing data from the National Family Health Survey-5, National Sample Survey, Census records (1971–2011), and ethnographic studies, the paper identifies four primary drivers: Structural demographic imbalance creating 39 million surplus grooms, Economic liberalisation producing urban-rural divergence in marriage timing, Female educational expansion altering assortative mating and delaying marriage among educated women, and Dating applications enabling partner selection beyond caste boundaries. This paper argues that rather than uniform decline, India is experiencing polarised restructuring among disadvantaged populations that is rural, less-educated, lower-caste, marriage remains nearly universal but increasingly distressed (bride shortage, dowry inflation, cross-region migration) among privileged populations (urban, highly educated, wealthy), marriage is becoming selective, delayed, and increasingly questioned. This divergence has significant implications for gender relations, family policy, and social welfare in the world’s most populous nation.
Contemporary digital surveillance and the expansion of state-controlled Artificial Intelligence and mass data collection have provoked anxiety about Orwellian surveillance states which Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four so presciently imagined. This research examines whether the situation of contemporary state surveillance creates Orwellian legal and ethical nightmares, and critiques the efficacy of legal protections for the right to privacy. Using a mixed-doctrinal and empirical approach, this paper offers an in-depth and critical analysis of the legal frameworks comprising constitutional provisions, international and regional human rights law, and case law, and correlates this with a descriptive analysis of survey data derived from an anonymous Google Forms survey with ten respondents. This research used a five-item Likert-style survey to collect data regarding the respondents’ views on the expansion of surveillance, fear of data privacy, the greatest threat to privacy, the perceived sufficiency of privacy laws, and the perceived similarity of modern-day state surveillance to the year Nineteen Eighty-Four. This study found that the public believes the expansion of state surveillance is vastly evident (80%), is highly concerned about state-sponsored data privacy (70%), and is unconvinced about the sufficiency of existing state-sponsored data privacy laws (70% expressed disagreement), and that contemporary state-sponsored data privacy laws and Orwell’s dystopia are highly congruent (70% expressed agreement). Data Privacy, by far, is the greatest state-sponsored surveillance concern. Within the context of proportionality and necessity within state-sponsored data privacy laws from the Puttaswamy case to the Court of Justice for the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights, this research concludes that contemporary state-sponsored data privacy laws and Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, while far from perfect, are congruent and relevant.
Law as an independent institution mainly consists of rules, statutes, presidents, etc. But sometimes,
these aren’t enough to attain the ultimate purpose of having a living legal system, that is to provide
justice. For this purpose, law collaborates with several other disciplines like social science,
psychology, philosophy, biology, and chemistry.
Toxicology, in its essence is a scientific discipline that deals mainly with chemistry, biology and
medical science, which was introduced in the field of law by Mathieu Orfila in the Lafarge murder
case in 1840, Tulle, France.
Before toxicology was formally introduced, justice in cases of poisoning were solved mainly on
qualitative and circumstantial evidence like, who was present, who had the motive, who had the
knowledge? How did the poison get there and how did it come in contact to the victim? If the
suspect pleads innocent and says that he is being framed who has the strongest motive to frame
the suspect? Could it be possible that the case is simply non maintainable and the death was a
complete accident or natural cause or mistake of the victim himself?
Though none of these questions seem valid and legally material enough to solely determine a
whole judgment, it was the best method in absence of any proper method of study of poisoning
and hazardous substances. This is the gap that Toxicology was created to fill.
The scale of this challenge remains considerable in India today. National Crime Records Bureau
data for 2022 record that chemical poisoning accounted for roughly a quarter of all suicides
reported nationally, underscoring why a scientifically reliable method of establishing the cause
and circumstances of death continues to be indispensable to the administration of criminal justice.1
The following article seeks to study what toxicology is, what are the different sub-divisions of
toxicology, and why they are necessary. We also try to enhance our understanding with the help
of case laws and illustrations.
The Indian constitution provides the Fundamental rights to its citizens it also sets the Fundamental Duties as mentioned under part IVA[1] of the constitution of India under Article 51A[2]. The main aim of these duties are to instill feelings of patriotism unity and responsibility amoungst the citizens although all these duties remain unenforceable in the court of law. This research paper tries understands the effects of non enforceability on the civil behaviour and how it is affecting the people as a whole. Through the analytical and doctrinal method of research it studies the constitutional interpretations, judicial explanations and the reasoning of the landmark cases and the committee recommendations to assess whether the making the Fundamental Duties legally binding can help the society in enhancing the society by encouraging the feelings of responsibility and awareness. This research paper also takes expert opinions of legal scholars and it refers to articles on Fundamental Duties by DD Basu. This research paper also compares the Fundamental Duties of many countries like China, Russia in which such duties are enforceable in the court of law and some countries take such duties as moral obligations such as Japan and USA. This research papers also advises that India should follow a method of selective enforceability in which only certain part would remain enforceable. This research paper concludes by stating it can be understood total total enforceability may not work as a whole but targeting essential certain parts enforcing it can bride the gap between duties and rights in India. Lastly this research paper also provides with the future scope for research on this topic.