LLM Group 5 Criminal Law and Criminal Administration Collective Violence and Criminal Justice System 2019 Question Paper with Solutions

For full marks, cover: this question offers two notes and, unlike the notes questions on the later papers, it does not say "any two of three", so both must be answered and each is worth twelve and a half marks. Give each note a structure of its own: for (a), the forms, the law and the gap; for (b), the constitutional text, the doctrinal test and the current controversy. Do not write half a page on each and stop.

(a) Violence committed against women

The forms, and the provision for each. Violence against Indian women is not one phenomenon. In the marital home it appears as cruelty and dowry harassment, punished by sections 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and as dowry death within seven years of marriage under section 80, supported by the presumption in section 118 of the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023. Sexual violence is covered by sections 63 to 70, with section 65(2) for a victim below twelve and section 70 for gang rape.

The decisive cases. Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan, (1997) 6 SCC 241 arose from the gang rape of Bhanwari Devi, a saathin employed under a Rajasthan Government programme, in reprisal for her attempt to prevent a child marriage, and the collapse of the prosecution that followed. The Supreme Court held that Articles 19(1)(g) and 21 include the right to a safe working environment, used Articles 51(c) and 253 to draw on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and laid down guidelines binding under Article 141 until Parliament legislated, which it did only in 2013.

State of Punjab v. Gurmit Singh, (1996) 2 SCC 384 removed the evidentiary obstacles at trial, holding that the evidence of the prosecutrix stands on the footing of an injured witness, that corroboration is not a rule of law, and that delay in complaint must be assessed against social reality rather than treated as fatal.

(b) Freedom of speech

The text. Article 19(1)(a) guarantees freedom of speech and expression to citizens; Article 19(2) permits reasonable restrictions in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States, public order, decency or morality, contempt of court, defamation, and incitement to an offence. Public order and incitement to an offence were not in the original text. They were added by the Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951, in response to Romesh Thappar v. State of Madras, AIR 1950 SC 124, where the Supreme Court struck down a ban on the circulation of the journal Cross Roads on the ground that the Article as it then stood allowed restriction only where the security of the State was undermined and that public order was a wider concept the framers had deliberately excluded.

The grounds are exhaustive. A Constitution Bench held in Kaushal Kishor v. State of U.P., (2023) 4 SCC 1 that no restriction may be imposed on speech beyond the grounds enumerated in Article 19(2), even to protect other constitutional values.

The controversy. Sedition occupies an unusual position. Kedar Nath Singh v. State of Bihar, AIR 1962 SC 955 saved section 124A of the Indian Penal Code by confining it to incitement to violence or public disorder; in S.G. Vombatkere v. Union of India, (2022) 7 SCC 433 the Supreme Court directed that the section be kept in abeyance, with no fresh FIRs and pending proceedings stayed; and since 1 July 2024 the provision has been replaced by section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, whose constitutionality is itself under challenge.

What both notes have in common: the enforcement gap

Each note describes a body of law that is comprehensive on paper and thin in practice, and in both the loss occurs at the first step rather than at the last.

The Court supplied a working framework for hate speech, asking who spoke, what was said, and to whom, and treating the reach and authority of the speaker and the vulnerability of the target group as material. The practical lesson is that where the offence is broadly worded, as sections 196, 197 and 299 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita are, the process becomes the sanction and the acquittal comes years too late to matter.

The remedy each note still lacks

Both notes end at the same practical problem, which is that the law provides a right and no reliable way of realising it.

For violence against women the missing piece is protection during the trial rather than after it. Section 398 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 now requires every State Government to prepare and notify a witness protection scheme, which is a genuine advance, but the schemes are new, thinly funded and rarely invoked, and the practical consequence is that a complainant who lives in the same household or the same street as the accused withdraws. That, rather than any defect in sections 63 to 87 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, is why conviction rates in this class of case remain low.

Conclusion. Both notes describe a body of law that is now comprehensive in definition and weak in delivery. On violence against women, sections 63 to 87 and 124 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the civil machinery of the Act of 2005 and the workplace machinery of the Act of 2013 leave very little unnamed, but Vishaka had to legislate for sixteen years because Parliament would not, Gurmit Singh had to remove evidentiary assumptions that the statute had not touched, and the one recommendation the Verma Committee pressed hardest, the removal of the marital rape exception, was refused.

On freedom of speech, the doctrinal line is settled and generous: advocacy however unpopular is protected and only incitement with a proximate nexus to disorder may be punished, on the authority of Ram Manohar Lohia, Rangarajan and Shreya Singhal, and the grounds of restriction are exhaustive after Kaushal Kishor. What remains unsettled is the one provision with the longest history, sedition, which survives in abeyance as section 124A and in a new form as section 152, with its validity still to be decided.