The State of the System Report: Understanding the Scale of Crime and Punishment in India

(Organised by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy on 23 April, 2025)

Speakers:

i) Dr Shamika Ravi, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister. Formerly, she was Director of Research at Brookings India, Vice President, Economic Policy at Observer Research Foundation, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow of Governance Studies Program at Brookings Institution.

ii) Sidharth Luthra, Senior Advocate to the Supreme Court of India, and former Additional Solicitor General for India at the Supreme Court of India.

iii) Justice V Ramasubramanian, a former Judge of the Supreme Court of India and currently the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission.

Moderator: Arghya Sengupta, Founder and Research Director at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

1. The State of the System, a comprehensive database documenting the extent of criminalisation in India, a report completed after three years of research by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, was unveiled at the session held at the Constitution Club of India on 23rd April, 2025. 

   
   

2. The report lays the groundwork for a much-needed conversation about reimagining crime and punishment in India. It also seeks to inform a principled approach to criminal law legislation, balancing the need for criminalisation with individual rights, economic growth, and efficient functioning of the judicial system. It highlights how criminal law, which should be limited to addressing only serious threats to public order and national security, has encroached upon civil, social, economic, and regulatory matters of daily life.

   
   

3. The report is authored by Aashna Mansata, Ishaan Bamba, and Sriyanshi Bhatt, Research Fellows, Crime and Punishment at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy; Ayushi Sharma, a Senior Resident Fellow, Crime and Punishment at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy; and Naveed Mehmood, Lead, Crime and Punishment at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

   
   

4. The session revolved around the report’s idea of the need for decriminalisation of minor offences and rationalisation of punishments in Indian criminal law, highlighting the criminalisation of trivial cases like milking a cow on the road, failure to provide sufficient exercise to the pet dog, etc, stressing that criminalisation of such trivial matters just results in inefficiency and delay in justice disposition due to overburdening of litigations on judiciary.

   
   

5. The panel consisted of two eminent criminal law experts—Mr Luthra and Justice Ramasubramanian, and an eminent economist, Dr Ravi. While Mr Luthra and Justice Ramasubramanian delved into the intricacies of the legal implications of the high extent of criminalisation, Dr Ravi focused on how “delayed justice” due to overcriminalisation is a major hindrance in India’s ambition of Viksit Bharat 2047.

   
   

Opening Remarks

6. Ayushi Sharma started the event with welcome remarks for all the panellists and the moderator, and invited Mr Naveed Mehmood, the lead author, to deliver introductory remarks on the report.

   
   

7. Mr Mehmood began his statement by highlighting that the issue of overcrowding of criminal litigations in the Indian judiciary is due to the criminalisation of frivolous offences. He then went on to put forth some empirical data from his findings in the report:

   
   

   1. Only 20 per cent of the criminal laws are deemed as the laws in the minds of ordinary citizens.

      
      

   2. Of the 7,305 crimes on the statute books, only a fraction deal with conduct threatening fundamental values such as public order, national security, or protection of life and liberty. A vast number of them address regulatory non-compliances or minor infractions, such as being absent from duty without giving one month’s notice, distributing feed bottles to a woman who cannot breastfeed or neglecting to provide proper exercise to a pet dog.

      
      

   3. Nearly 75 per cent of these crimes arise from the laws governing everyday governance. This not only adds to the legal procedural complexity, but it also exposes individuals to the risk of arrest and prosecution.

      
      

8. After introductory remarks by Mr Mehmood, Mr Arghya Sengupta took on the task of being the moderator of the event and invited the speakers individually to put forward their points.

The Discussion

9. Taking the stage, Mr Luthra described Indian criminal law as all-pervasive, touching life from birth to death. He gave the example of the criminalisation of cannabis that, according to him, is a part of our culture, and was never meant to be criminalised. 

   
   

10. He revealed how Western nations wanted to criminalise it to maintain greater dependence on manufactured drugs. He also highlighted how the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, mistakenly described both cannabis and opium as the same, and criminalised cannabis along with opium. 

    
    

11. Further, he exemplified the flaws in the "Cheque Bounce" provision of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, and how it has become a disaster to the criminal justice system due to the unmanageable number of cases relating to that, proposing that the increased adoption of digital transactions is only viable solution to the problem.

    
    

12. Mr Luthra criticised the continual lack of political will by the state of India to reimagine the criminal laws, which have overburdened the Indian judiciary. He further points out that the government had a golden opportunity to reimagine the criminal justice framework when it brought Bharatiya Nyaya Sahita (BNS), Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam (BSA) in 2023, but once again, the state failed to address most of the problems regarding overcriminalisation.

    
    

13. Acknowledging the government’s positive effort to decriminalise around 180 offences across 42 laws governing environment, agriculture, media, industry and trade, publication, and other domains to promote ease of doing business and life, through Jan Vishwas Act, 2023, Mr Luthra emphasised that still a vast number of outdated and overly criminalising law went unnoticed, and requires an urgent review.

    
    

14. Furthermore, he posits that criminal sanction is society’s response to serious misconduct, trivialising and making it applicable to every small act, is abhorrent to a society like India, which values the rule of law. 

    
    

15. In a citizen-centric nation like India, he argued, the priority must be to decriminalise trivial matters and reserve criminal penalties for gravely serious offences, ensuring that the justice system does not become a tool of oppression in everyday life.

    
    

16. Concluding his statement, Mr Luthra underlined the need to critically assess how laws affect the everyday lives of ordinary citizens, rather than merely those who can easily move to court and afford a lawyer. He stressed the importance of evaluating the impact of laws in the real world, advocating the removal of unnecessary criminal liabilities and offences, and refining laws to ensure their effective implementation. He also proposed the imposition of penalties only where necessary. Importantly, he urged a shift in focus from mere sentence bargaining to offence bargaining, offering a lesser charge in trivial cases.

    
    

17. Dr Shamika Ravi opened her remarks with a presentation titled "Delayed Justice", where she focussed on the broader issue of the judiciary’s non-delivery, apart from just the issue of outdated or non-essential criminal laws.

18. She pointed out that the inability of the system to deliver timely justice hampers basic human rights. Commending India’s remarkable leap forward in poverty reduction from 29.5 per cent to 3.9 per cent over the last twelve years, after decades of Garibi Hatao efforts, Dr Ravi emphasised that the country has now overcome most of its structural problems.

    
    

19. While progress on most of the areas of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is evident, she highlighted that India continues to lag significantly in one crucial area—contract enforcement. The reverberation of delayed contract enforcement is felt by almost all sections of society, Dr Ravi explained. In India’s ongoing negotiations for bilateral trade agreements, counterparties now mainly cite judicial delays in contract enforcement, not political instability, as the most significant risk. This inefficiency hampers foreign investment and is a major threat to the nation’s ambition of Viksit Bharat 2047.

    
    

20. Citing the example of Bihar, where, on average, it takes fifteen years to solve a land dispute, she argued that the broader goal of improving ease of doing business is dependent on the efficient functioning of the judiciary. Ultimately, it is not only the flawed laws but also the institutional inefficiency of delayed justice that eventually costs the nation's growth.

    
    

21. Presenting district court data revealing delays in judgment in criminal cases, Dr Ravi noted that, on average, only half of all the murder cases get a judgment within a year. Surprisingly, even some of the most advanced states, including Delhi and Kerala, have poor records in terms of justice delivery. This, she contended, indicates that the problem lies less in the availability of the resource and more in the operational inefficiencies of the judicial system itself.

    
    

22. Lastly, Dr Ravi applauded the empirical approach used in the report, which revealed the unnecessary laws that still charge people for petty offences, eventually slowing national development. She stressed the necessity of the judiciary to provide additional information on the disposals of judgment, types of offences, and the types of sentences. She argues that this transparency will allow for fine-tuning and rationalising the criminal legislation.

    
    

23.  Justice Ramasubramanian started his remark by sharing a story of two friends, one of whom was charged with a crime and released after ten years in jail, and the other was strangled for the last ten years in the legal and procedural complications of starting a business. Justice Ramasubramanian pointed out that the complication of starting a business is worse than committing a crime under the Indian Penal Code. He described this scenario as “the disease of doing business,” where we should focus on providing the “ease of doing business”.

    
    

24. Justice Ramasubramanian further noted that the system is so complex and agonising that many plead guilty, even when they are not, just to escape the procedural complexities. He also acknowledged that despite all the pitfalls of the system of administration of criminal justice, the faith of a common man was more in the criminal judicial administration than in civil justice administration, so much that the society has developed a psyche to convert even civil cases into criminal cases, this, he referred to, as a problem that needs to be worked out.

    
    

Concluding Questions

25. As the discussion drew close to an end, moderator Mr Sengupta put forth a series of final questions to the panel, inviting each speaker individually to reflect on the way forward for legislative reform and institutional improvement.

    
    

26. Dr Shamika Ravi, responding to the question on what steps could ease the burden of doing business in India, emphasised the role of digitisation and the use of technology. She noted that increasing access to data and documents digitally can significantly reduce procedural delays and improve efficiency.

27. Commending the government’s progress under the Jan Vishwas Act, she also expressed optimism for a more rational approach in the upcoming Jan Vishwas 2.0, underlining that the technological integration has the potential to address many of the issues relating to judicial inefficiencies.

    
    

28. Turning to Justice Ramasubramanian, Mr Sengupta raised the issue of the growing number of offences in Indian law, questioning why this trend has persisted without the government's effort to rationalise it. In his response, Justice Ramasubramanian explained that overcriminalisation was intended to create a fear psychosis among the citizens, to be compliant with the laws. He suggested that the legal system has historically used overcriminalisation as a tool for compliance, which, in turn, has led to unforeseen concerns.

    
    

29. Finally, Mr Luthra was asked about possible steps by the government for further decriminalisation, especially given that the gravest impact of overcriminalisation is borne by marginalised and vulnerable communities. Mr Luthra advocated for a holistic re-evaluation of offences, calling for a shift towards financial penalties rather than criminal sanctions wherever possible. He also stressed the need for fairly assessed penalties to avert corruption and non-compliance.

    
    

30. Collectively, the concluding insights from the panel advanced the common recommendation that our laws require meaningful reform, which must be people-centric, technology-driven, and incorporate the idea of justice, efficiency, and inclusion.

Ends.

The author, Sanish Kumar, is a Junior Editor at Ramjas Political Review.

Featured image credit: Hindustan Times