08/07/2019 - Government policies

KEY POINTS

·        Neither ‘crimes against humanity’ nor ‘genocide’ has been made part of India’s criminal law, a lacuna that needs to be addressed urgently.

·        The case concerned the mass killing of Sikhs during the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 in Delhi  and throughout the country.

·        The court categorically stated that these kind of mass crimes “engineered by political actors with the assistance of the law enforcement agencies” fit into the category of crimes against humanity (CAH).

·        Internationally, CAH are dealt with under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). They are defined as offences such as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, torture, imprisonment and rape committed as a part of “widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”.

·        India is not a party to the Rome Statute, which means that it is under no obligation at present to enact a separate legislation dealing with CAH.

·        Even after ratification of the Genocide Convention (1948), India has not enacted it in domestic legislation.

Reasons for reluctance

The Indian representatives at the International Law Commission (ILC) have stated that the draft articles should not conflict with or duplicate the existing treaty regimes.

India had objected to the definition of CAH during negotiations of the Rome Statute on three grounds.

·        India was not in favour of using ‘widespread or systematic’ as one of the conditions, preferring ‘widespread and systematic’, which would require a higher threshold of proof.

·        India wanted a distinction to be made between international and internal armed conflicts. This was probably because its internal conflicts with naxals and other non-state actors in places like Kashmir and the Northeast could fall under the scope of CAH.

·        Relating to the inclusion of enforced disappearance of persons under CAH. It is pertinent here that India has signed but not yet ratified the UN International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances as it would put the country under an obligation to criminalise it through domestic legislation.

In State v. Sajjan Kumar, the Delhi High Court also said that “a familiar pattern of mass killings” was seen “in Mumbai in 1993, in Gujarat in 2002, in Kandhamal, Odisha in 2008, and Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh in 2013”, where the criminals “have enjoyed political patronage and managed to evade prosecution”.

It would be advisable for India to show political will and constructively engage with the ILC, which would also, in the process, address the shortcomings in the domestic criminal justice system.

evaluate please

Kindly review

Kindly review,and please evaluate from introduction to conclusion,what was missed???

Hi team,

Pls review suggest anything need be looked into....

I want to thanks my reviewers vinay, vedesh,Rakesh and mainly Shankar IAS academy for this questions and for  this wonderful exercise.