CrPC (Amendment) Act, 2008: Put on hold

Political power is highly dependent on delivery of social justice, by that we mean targeted delivery of social justice. Usually two things obstruct social justice. The first is any sort of codified standard. A prime example is the constitution, it must get amended every now and then. The second is of course data and statistics. 

This Government's crusade against data and statistics is well known and they have won all the fronts. They have already won major battles against codified standards. The war continues.

As we discussed before (Justice gets a Social Justice angle, Lawyers do not like the amendments either), the Government wants to create a legal framework tailored to their lofty goals of secularism. However, this seems to have hit roadblocks:

NEW DELHI: In a rollback of a major pro-people initiative, the government has decided to leave out of the just-amended Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), the provision that restricts the usual powers of the police to arrest offenders in crimes punishable with up to seven years. 

A decision has been taken not to 'notify' it -  mandatory process for any legislation to become effective. Instead, the government may bring in a couple of changes in the CrPC (Amendment) Act, 2008, in the next Parliament session. The call will, however, be taken by the new government.

The decision came in the wake of objections to the provision (Section 41A of the Act) raised by lawyers' associations who were widely seen as guided by the fear that the amendment would result in reduced business for them. [link]

As usual the TOI adds a pithy "Times View":

Times View

The government has dashed the hopes of civil society by deciding not to notify a new law that takes away for power of arrest from the police for crimes that attract a prison term of less than seven years. The new law would have curbed police abuse of power which is far too common. Often people are illegally detained on the flimsiest of charges. Now that the government won't bring the new law (possibly because it's scared of the agitating lawyers who sense in it a cut in litigation and hence their business), we are coming up with an alternative proposal. Let it be fixed that a person illegally detained would be compensated with a sum of Rs 10,000 per day or three-times his salary, whichever is higher. Wanton abuse of the law will stop only if there is such a high price to pay.

Aside from the idiotic suggestion of compensation, the Times of India is suddenly a paragon of humanity. They ran the Varun Gandhi story non-stop for almost a month now, no Times View is forthcoming for the draconian application of law.

When jerk offs run the Government and their jerk off cheerleaders have a monopoly on the media business, it is the common people who end up paying a high price.