Abhinav Sekhri

Abhinav Sekhri
Abhinav Sekhri

Abhinav Sekhri is a lawyer practising in New Delhi. When not working or writing about criminal law, he can be found trawling through the archives in search of curious stories from Indian legal history.

Book
Book Review

Reorienting the Lens on Judicial Reforms

Most litigants will never end up in a high court; their cases will remain in the labyrinths of district courts. Yet, reforms at the base of the judicial pyramid have not got the required attention.
▶02-Apr-2025
Abhinav Sekhri

Restoring a Rule of Law: On Bail and Judicial Delays

Bail has to be rooted in the ordinariness of statutory remedies if it has to be consistent and fair. It cannot be that relief to undertrials must depend on the personal sense of a superior court…
▶04-Dec-2024
Abhinav Sekhri

From Codes to Sanhitas: Power, Myths, and Problematic Continuities

‘The new criminal justice laws mark an important moment in how independent India will function. It may herald a descent towards greater authoritarian tendencies and a nullifying of the judicial role…
▶07-Feb-2024
Abhinav Sekhri

Demolitions: Rule by Law or Rule of Law?

We demand that governments follow the rule of law when clearing ‘illegal’ settlements. But if laws permit the same outcomes as those that might be caused by the state ignoring them, is this variant…
▶17-Aug-2023
Abhinav Sekhri
Book
Book Review

Regulating Religious Expression

The experience of legal provisions against “outraging religious feelings” demonstrates the pitfalls of modern states resorting to penal secularism.
▶07-Aug-2023
Abhinav Sekhri

On Digital Devices and Criminal Investigations

We need judicial courage in reclaiming the silences in our laws, which were designed for a time when privacy did not matter, to protect the rights of citizens during search and seizure of digital…
▶03-Dec-2022
Abhinav Sekhri

Front-loading Criminal Justice

‘To try and satiate society’s lust for punishing and othering a criminal, bail hearings emerge as an alternate site of justice with courts engaging in pseudo-condemnation to justify imposition of…
▶19-Aug-2021
Abhinav Sekhri

The Criminal Law Reform Committee

Unless an attempt at reforming India's criminal laws questions the power imbalances in the system, the exercise will only end up beautifying the facades. This unfortunately is to be the fate…
▶04-Nov-2020
Abhinav Sekhri