Healthy University Requires Both Authority And Dissent

The recent incident at Delhi University's Faculty of Law has revived an old but increasingly urgent question: what has happened to the relationship between those who teach and those who learn?Earlier this month, CCTV footage from the Faculty of Law showed a PhD scholar allegedly assaulting a senior professor. The incident was reportedly connected to a grievance concerning an earlier PhD admission interview. The scholar was subsequently suspended, an inquiry was initiated, and the matter reached...

Securities Law Violations Under SEBI PFUTP Regulations: Practical Guide

I. Indian Securities Law addresses market manipulation and securities fraud through Section 12A of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992(“the SEBI Act”) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices relating to Securities Market) Regulations, 2003 (“PFUTP Regulations”). The core prohibitions are in Regulations 3 and 4, which bar fraudulent devices, deceptive schemes and manipulative or unfair trade practices in relation to...

Neuro-Privacy And Indian Constitution: Should Brain Data Be Treated As Sensitive Personal Data?

A commercially available headband can now record electroencephalographic (EEG) signals well enough to infer attention levels, emotional valence, and early markers of neurological conditions. Meditation applications sell such headbands in India today; neurotechnology firms are testing implantable and wearable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for both therapeutic and consumer use. What none of these products currently face, in India, is a data protection regime that treats the signal coming out of...

Prosecuting Professionals Under PMLA: Advice, Association, Or Complicity?

Modern commercial transactions rarely involve only two people. Lawyers draft documents, accountants prepare financial statements, consultants advise on structures, lenders assess creditworthiness and intermediaries introduce parties or coordinate transactions. When one participant is later accused of generating or laundering proceeds of crime, however, the involvement of everyone around the transaction can begin to acquire a suspicious character. The difficult question is where legitimate...

Anti-Defection Law: Speakers Role Is Questionable

The anti-defection law is four decades old. It has seen so many breaches and frequent violations that it seems to have lost its biting teeth. The law is faced with a misconceived narrative that 2/3rd of the legislative party members can defect to avoid disqualification under the 2003 amendment laws. Secondly, the Election Commission is dragged into the fray, though it does not possess jurisdiction whatsoever in matters of disqualification. The 'Original political party' of a legislator...

Losing Award, Keeping Shield: Section 9 Limits

After Home Care Retail Marts[1], the Supreme Court's latest Section 9 decision poses a tougher question: once the losing party is allowed legal protection, how far may the court go without turning interim protection into an appeal against the award?The concept of arbitration rests on finality. Section 34 of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 ("the Act") provides the statutory framework for challenging an award, while Section 36 governs its enforcement subject to the statutory scheme....

Conditions, Not Custody: What Bail Conditions Are For And How Far They May Go

On 14 July 2026, a Magistrate at Kalyan, Maharashtra granted bail to a sitting corporator, accused of assaulting three doctors on duty at a municipal hospital, on a bond of Rs. 50,000 subject to four routine bail conditions. Three days later, three of his co-accused were also released on parity. On 18 July 2026, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court, acting on its own motion, stayed both orders and directed the corporator to surrender. The remaining three accused had not yet been released....

3-Year Practice To 1-Year : Who Gets To Write The Rules Of The Game For Judicial Services?

The dynamic rules of the gameOn August 21, a divided Bench of the Supreme Court modified the three-year Bar practice requirement a little over fifteen months after it had been restored. As per the majority judgment, for recruitments notified from April 1, 2027, candidates will require one year of actual practice, followed, upon selection, by one year of training at a State Judicial Academy and one year of structured clerkship. For the transitional period, candidates have been permitted to apply...

Colonial Policing In Constitutional Democracy

The last few months have rekindled an important debate in the country. What we have witnessed in the national capital and elsewhere ought to make us reconsider whether the paradigms that continue to govern our policing are suited to the constitutional democracy we have become. It is time that we reconsider if the purpose of our policing has to be fundamentally coercive. A closer look explains why the colonial inheritance of Indian policing rationalizes force being so deeply embedded in the...

Debit Freezing Of Bank Accounts: Shift From Seizure To Attachment

Criminal process has always drawn a sharp line between two very different state actions over crime property: taking custody of it to preserve evidence, and to ensure that whoever is ultimately found entitled to it actually gets it. The first is seizure, and the second is Attachment. For decades, the Criminal Procedure Code, 1973 (CrPC) gave police officers only the first tool by way of section 102 CrPC. Investigating agencies and courts stretched that single provision to also perform the second...

When Judge Errs: What Three Decades Of Case Law Reveal About India's Unpublished Disciplinary Record

Not one High Court in India publishes a code of conduct for its judges. Only the Madras High Court discloses anything about the conduct that can be complained against, a general notice on bribery, and only two High Courts, Tripura and Jammu & Kashmir, have ever disclosed an order imposing a sanction on a judge; the other 23 scored zero. These are among the findings of the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and JALDI's Judicial Transparency Index, released on August 1, 2026, which tested all 25...

There's Limit To Cross-Examination

There are “Dirty minds not clothes”, the Delhi High Court has recently reiterated an important principle in sexual-offence jurisprudence: the personal choices of a survivor cannot be placed on trial in an attempt to determine whether an offence was committed. In a judgment delivered in the State (NCT of Delhi) Vs. Sajid Ali on August 10, 2026, Justice Chandrasekharan Sudha overturned the acquittal of the accused recorded by the trial court and found the accused guilty on the evidence before the...